Open Government Data Movement Research Articles

Understanding the evolution of open government data research: towards open data sustainability and smartness

The past decade has witnessed a rapid development of open government data practices and academic research. However, there is no systematic survey of existing research to understand the evolution of open government data. Such research can facilitate knowledge transfer within and across domains, and foster learning for countries in the early stages of open government data development. This study quantitively extracted the evolution trajectory of open government data based on the main path analysis method and then analysed the underlying motivations. The results show that open government data research went through four main phases and that the open government data movement has spread towards developing countries and smart cities. Different challenges and issues faced by the researchers in each phase drove the evolution of open government data research. Finally, we discuss future directions of open government data research based on our findings and recent development. There is a tendency to create sustainable open government data and smartness by employing artificial intelligence and creating data marketplaces. Points for practitioners Open government data efforts have evolved over the years into a global phenomenon. Countries have learned from each other and more and more efforts are focused on innovating with open government data by stimulating co-creation and using other incentives. The way that data are opened should focus on achieving goals like innovation, participation, transparency and accountability. There is a tendency to create sustainable open government data and smartness by employing artificial intelligence and creating data marketplaces.

Moving towards open government data 2.0 in U.S. health agencies: Engaging data users and promoting use

We trace the evolution of open government data (OGD) publication among U.S. health agencies to illustrate how OGD goals and benefits might be achieved. Our novel conceptual framework illustrates the implicit logic underlying OGD activities in the health domain and their anticipated impact on population health. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 50 diverse practitioners and policymakers from local, state, and federal agencies, and non-governmental organizations. Using a positive deviance approach, we identified innovative U.S. health agencies that were early OGD adopters. We analyzed transcripts using a grounded theory methodological approach to identify common themes. Results indicate that the OGD movement is marked by three major eras (pre-OGD early activities, Open Data 1.0, and Open Data 2.0), and U.S. health agencies are in different stages of evolution. Among innovative jurisdictions, OGD transitioned from an early focus on releasing large volumes of data to a more demand-driven approach to promote meaningful user engagement with data. Although engagement strategies could yield benefits, limited evidence exists on best practices for engaging diverse data users and many jurisdictions have not yet transitioned to this later phase. Our conceptual framework could be adapted for other domains to help visualize how successful OGD initiatives might unfold.

Exploring the extent of openness of open government data – A critique of open government datasets in the UK

The claim of the open government data (OGD) movement is that it would add considerable value to the political, economic and social development of nations. Thus, during the past few years, governments around the world have been under increasing pressure to release data to encourage citizen participation in government. In the UK, the government publishes its data on the data.gov.uk website for the public to find, view, download and interrogate.11See: https://data.gov.uk/. In this paper, we evaluate the extent of openness of OGD in the UK – a recognised global leader in the OGD movement – by examining a sample of 400 datasets listed on this website. The examination uses an ‘ordinary citizen’ test, which is developed based on the original eight Sebastopol principles of open data. Our examination discovers that existing prevalent measures of openness of data are inadequate. Our findings demonstrate that the majority of the published government resources on the website are informational rather than granular data. In fact, only a small minority of these advertised as open data are actually open, which severely limits their open government utilities.

Performance assessment and major trends in open government data research based on Web of Science data

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the global progress and explore research areas and development trends of open government data (OGD) field from the Web of Science (WOS) database by applying the bibliometric visualization approach. Design/methodology/approach This paper conducted a bibliometric mapping study on OGD scientific research publications based on WOS from six aspects. Findings There are six research perspectives on OGD research. European countries and developed countries pay more attention to OGD movement. The 20 most cited and highly influential research documents were identified. What’s more, the analysis of journals level highlights the interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary characteristics of OGD research. Current six research topics for OGD research that have been formed and two major emerging research priorities in OGD research fields were identified. Research limitations/implications The limitation is that data retrieval result which decided to include only 180 publications in the WOS-indexed publications produced a bias against research publications published in non-WOS publication sources. A fuller research trend would be obtained with the more extensively used electronic databases. Practical implications By dint of bibliometric analysis, this paper may be able to quantify research patterns on OGD, to analyze what has been done in this field and to identify the main research hotspots. Therefore, it can aid academic researchers and practicing professionals in contributing to the field more effectively and advancing scientific progress in the field of OGD research. Social implications The results can also promote the study on OGD movement in academia, government and industry and also enrich the theory of OGD and provide some new perspectives for research on OGD. Originality/value This is the first study to quantify and evaluate global research patterns and development trends in OGD research based on WOS database, which provides a quantitative perspective on OGD studies that may assist in advancing the development of the field.

An ADD-Oriented Software Architecture for Structuring Information to Open Government Data

The huge number of heterogeneous and not standardized websites where public records are disclosed is an evidence of how unprepa¬red governments are about Open Government Data movement. This scenario is seen all over the world, especially in organizations which open data prin¬ciples are new e.g. local governments. Thus, not effective law enforcement and the lack of openness result in a waste of resources applied to useless publication of documents, ma¬king it hard to achieve the benefits of open data. Looking for a way to help government at this hardworking task, this paper proposes a software architecture for structuring information into open data from distributed repositories placed at local governments websites. This work follows Attribute-Driven Design (ADD) methodology, where the requirement analysis for proposed ar¬chitecture has been conducted based on availability problems occurred in 561 websites from Brazilian cities. The main contribution of this paper is the proposition of an architecture whose dissemination and instantiation will allow society to focus efforts on more important tasks e.g. review data consistency, making it possible in a near future to automatize the structuring process in a way that data can be used for any purpose.

The failure of an early episode in the open government data movement: A historical case study

The open government data (OGD) movement that focuses on government transparency and data reuse did not appear out of thin air. Some early episodes of this social movement can be traced to the early 1990s.This paper presents a historical case study of such an OGD episode, a campaign targeted at a government database called JURIS, initiated by OGD advocates in the early 1990s. JURIS was a legal information retrieval system created by the Department of Justice and used by government employees, which contained federal court decisions (or case law), among many other primary legal materials. Public interest groups and small publishers intended to open up the database for public access and data reuse, but their effort failed and eventually led to the shutdown of the JURIS system. This paper provides a detailed account of the history, analyzes the reasons of the failure, and discusses outcomes of the campaign. Drawing from social movement theories, especially the political opportunity structure, the paper illustrates the complexity of the social political environment surrounding the OGD movement, especially with regard to an important type of government data, primary legal information, in the United States.

Towards Open Data for Public Accountability: Examining the US and the UK Models

Abstract Since 2009 governments worldwide have been developing Open Government Data (OGD) programs. Our paper examines the ways in which public agencies in the two leading OGD countries, the US and the UK, have released information assets to promote public sector accountability. Theoretically and empirically, we discuss the vision and execution of the OGD policy in these countries since 2009 and demonstrate that the movement took a different path than the one chartered by the original policy makers. We then propose a new path for the OGD movement to better support the democratic ideal of improved accountability of public sector agencies. Keywords: (Open Data; Accountability; Open Government; Transparency; Disclosure) Copyright : Copyright is held by the authors. 1 Introduction The conceptual origins of the open government data (OGD) movement 1 and freedom of information (FOI) legislation are rooted in a desire to improve public accountability. However, the OGD movement blurred the original intent, combining the goal of accountability with concepts such as participation, collaboration, innovation and improvement of public service. The latter may have no significant impact or even contradict accountability (Peled, 2011; Yu & Robinson, 2012). We therefore ask: Do the designs of US and UK OGD policies demonstrate an understanding of how to harness the potential of OGD to improve public sector accountability? If not, what can be done to fulfill OGD’s promise to improve accountability? We propose that open government programs must be evaluated according to three dimensions: informational, explanatory and enforcement. By empirically examining US and UK OGD datasets, we found a divergence between the OGD vision and its execution since 2009 in these two countries. We explain how the OGD movement grew to its current state of ‘release any data now’ disconnected from the accountability goal. We also propose to provide incentives to agencies to release even less datasets but ones that are more closely aligned with the goal of accountability. Critics may propose that ‘improved accountability’ is but one goal competing against other, no less valuable goals (Robinson et. al. 2009). We propose that the goal of ‘improved accountability’ is so demanding that it sets the ‘OGD bar’ very high. To meet this bar, agencies will be forced to publish information that is better linked to other information, better documented, and embedded in richer context. Such information will therefore also contribute to the attainment of additional OGD.

Access to Government Information: Right to Information and Open Government Data Synergy

The right to information springs from the right to expression under the notion that in order for an individual to be able to freely express ideas, opinions and thoughts, it should be able to freely formulate them, hence to be very well informed. The Right to Information (RTI) movement focuses on the fact that government information is being collected for the benefit of the public, and not for the benefit of the organisations themselves, and it constitutes the basis of a democratic regime. On the other hand, Open Government Data (OGD) refers to data produced or commissioned by government or government controlled entities, which can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone. The core of OGD movement lays into the proactive dissemination of unstructured raw data aiming firstly to innovation and economic growth by exploiting the given data to produce new products with added value, and secondly to accountability and transparency by providing access to data that bears political value on the way governments and administrations work. This paper attempts to present the underlined ideology of these two movements, which have fashioned the access to government information and to substantiate that the way to the future is a one-way street towards the greatest possible dissemination of government information as this can be established by the synergy of RTI and OGD in order to preserve and promote the primary human and political right to receive information so as to be informed and able to freely express opinions, ideas and thoughts.

The influence of the PSI directive on open government data: An overview of recent developments

Abstract This paper looks at the role of the European Directive on re-use of public sector information in the current trend towards opening up government data. After discussing the PSI directive, it gives an overview of current policies and practices with regard to open government data in the Member States. It is argued that the success of the open government data movement in some Member States can be related to the confusion or ignorance about the relationship between traditional freedom of information legislation and the re-use of public sector data. If future information policies decide to follow this trend, they should always ensure that existing rights on freedom of information are not harmed.