Framework for Prioritization of Open Data Publication: An Application to Smart Cities

Abstract

Public Sector Information is considered to play a fundamental role in the growth of the knowledge economy and improvements in society. Given the difficulty in publishing and maintaining all available data, due to budget constraints, institutions need to select which data to publish, giving priority to data most likely to generate social and economic impact. Priority of publication could become an even more significant problem in Smart Cities: as huge amounts of information are generated from different domains, the way data is prioritized and thus reused, could be a determining factor in promoting, among others, new and sustainable business opportunities for local entrepreneurs, and to improve citizen quality of life. However, people in charge of prioritizing which data to publish through open data portals (such as Chief Data Officers, or CDOs) do not have available any specific support in their decision-making process. In this work, a proposal of a framework for prioritization of open data publication as well as its application to Smart Cities is presented. This specific application of the framework relies on OSS (Open Source Software) indicators to help making decisions on the most relevant data to publish focused on developers and businesses operating within the Smart City context.