Evaluating a Business Ecosystem of Open Data Services Using the Fuzzy DEMATEL-AHP Approach

Abstract

The government has formulated and implemented an open data policy to promote administrative transparency and economic development in recent years. Therefore, most previous studies on open data have focused on e-government. Consequently, an open data service industry committed to providing innovative value-added data application services has emerged in Taiwan, with small- and medium-sized enterprises being the driving force. However, in a complex industrial environment, enterprises need to promote efficient data services development by developing a cross-disciplinary business ecosystem cooperatively. Nevertheless, few studies have discussed the open data service industry from the perspective of business ecosystems, making it impossible for enterprises to evaluate the business ecosystem of open data services built by them. In this study, we used the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy decision-making and trial evaluation laboratory methods to construct five evaluation dimensions and thirty-one evaluation criteria. We organized them into an evaluation scale to measure the business ecosystem’s performance of open data services built by enterprises. Then, using the case analysis method, we tested the applicability of the evaluation scale. This study examined the assessment scale of ecosystem construction in the open data industry, from the perspective of a business ecosystem, and analyzed the importance of each key criterion.