Abstract
Open data have the potential to improve the governance of universities as public institutions. In addition, open data are likely to increase the quality, efficacy and efficiency of the research and analysis of higher education systems by providing a shared empirical base for critical interrogation and reinterpretation. Drawing on research conducted by the Emerging Impacts of Open Data in Developing Countries project, and using an ecosystems approach, this research paper considers the supply, demand and use of open data as well as the roles of intermediaries in the governance of South African public higher education. It shows that government's higher education database is a closed and isolated data source in the data ecosystem; and that the open data that are made available by government is inaccessible and rarely used. In contrast, government data made available by data intermediaries in the ecosystem are being used by key stakeholders. Intermediaries are found to play several important roles in the ecosystem: (i) they increase the accessibility and utility of data; (ii) they may assume the role of a “keystone species” in a data ecosystem; and (iii) they have the potential to democratize the impacts and use of open data. The article concludes that despite poor data provision by government, the public university governance open data ecosystem has evolved because intermediaries in the ecosystem have reduced the viscosity of government data. Further increasing the fluidity of government open data will improve access and ensure the sustainability of open data supply in the ecosystem.
Highlights
Higher education has a critical role to play in development
In order to answer the research questions posed by this study, the Centre for Higher Education Trust’s (CHET) open data platform was used as a case to examine the dynamics of data supply,use and the role of intermediaries in the open data ecosystem
It is not possible to describe an exclusively open data ecosystem in this case, and, in general, it is perhaps more useful to reflect on the degree of openness as an attribute of data ecosystems; or to accept that ecosystems of this type will inevitably consist of data that varies along a continuum of openness
Summary
Higher education has a critical role to play in development. Open data may play a role in improving the governance of institutions, including universities (Cloete et al 2015b), by increasing the transparency of decision-making as well as the accountability of those tasked with implementing processes that serve the interest of society.. Governance that is not premised on informed decision-making has the potential to foster weak and fragmented institutions prone to corruption and/or the inappropriate allocation of resources. This potentially destructive combination is among the reasons for 5 of the 23 public universities in South Africa being under administration at the time of writing.. This potentially destructive combination is among the reasons for 5 of the 23 public universities in South Africa being under administration at the time of writing. University councils need accurate and informative data on the state of their institutions in order to shift the debate from one that is driven by ideology and self-interest to one that is empirically based and in the interest of the performance of the institution.
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