The complementarity of open data infrastructures

Abstract

Open data are expected to bring many advantages. To support the provision and use of open data and to stimulate the realization of these advantages, a variety of open data infrastructures has been released and are under development. The release of these open data infrastructures raises the question how they complement and relate to each other. No systematic analysis of these infrastructures is available. In this paper, a framework for comparing open data infrastructures is derived, and used to compare three different open data infrastructures. The comparison shows that open data infrastructures can be very diverse, differ in their focus resulting in different design choices, and each infrastructure has its own specific strengths. We argue that these open data infrastructures should complement each other by providing open interfaces, in this way stimulating the provision and use of open data and the realization of their advantages. As a consequence, an open ecosystem is created in which the best functionalities can be utilized.