Open data policy-making: A review of the state-of-the-art and an emerging research agenda

Abstract

This section presents a selection of papers on open data policy-making from the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research 2018 (dg.o 2018). To position the research discussed in this section meaningfully, our introductory article aims to create an overview of the state-of-the-art of open data policy-making research and to derive an emerging research agenda from this overview. We found that much research has been done in the field of open data in the past few decades. However, the number of conducted systematic literature reviews concerning open data research is limited and literature reviews that have included aspects related to open data policy-making are even more rare. Our analysis of eight systematic literature review articles that include the topic of open data policy-making shows that these articles contain four main content-related elements: open data policy-making, a discussion of open data policy-making research, theory used in open data policy-making research and suggested areas for future research about open data policy-making. We discuss each of these areas and we outline emerging research directions categorized by three main topics: 1) open data policy-making and theory development, 2) open data policy-making effects, and 3) open data policy-making from a multi-actor perspective. Finally, we provide an overview of the papers included in this section on open data policy-making.