How May an OGD Solution Help You? – An Information Behaviour Perspective

Abstract

AbstractInformation seekers express information behaviour (IB) when they seek or utilise information, which can help them work effectively, solve problems, or pursue hobbies. They can distil information from data. A growing source of data is open government data (OGD). While OGD is too raw for direct use, OGD solutions can help seekers to interpret and act on OGD. Previous OGD research lacks knowledge about the match between seekers’ IB and OGD solutions’ design. Therefore, this paper explores offered help of OGD solutions to seekers’ IB, assuming a general set of IB since it tends to propend between technologies. This paper used qualitative content analysis to analyse OGD solutions, aiming for saturation. First, a code frame was built from previous IB research. Second, 74 OGD solutions were selected through purposive sampling. Third, 37 OGD solutions were subsume coded, because of saturation, whereas the remaining 37 OGD solutions were checked for negative cases. The findings show that an OGD solution can help a seeker by (1) providing a base or frame for interpretation, (2) taking a proactive or active role in the distillation of information from OGD, and (3) contextualising its help to a seeker’s life. The findings unravelled the assumed general set of IB to reveal a new possible data behaviour (DB); where a seeker focuses on transforming and distributing information, distilled from OGD, to possibly satisfy the needs of other seekers.KeywordsOpen government dataSolutionInformation behaviourData behaviour