Enhancing the Adoption of E-Government Systems through Open Government and Open Government Data (OGD) Initiatives in Qatar

The present study aimed to analyze the status of e-government in developing countries, and particularly at Qatar. It also aimed to analyze the status of Open Government Data (OGD) in Qatar in order to identify the main motives that prompted the Qatari government to launch Open Government Data initiatives. In order to cover the research objectives effectively; the researcher used two main methods in order to cover the study objectives. The researcher used the qualitative method to achieve the goals of the study optimally and by reference to all sources on the subject of the study of previous studies, books and references. The researcher also used the analytical method through analyzing the status of e-government in developing countries, and particularly at Qatar. It also aims to analyze the status of Open Government Data (OGD) in Qatar in order to identify the main motives that prompted the Qatari government to launch Open Government Data initiatives. The research concluded that although Qatar is trying to develop e-government systems in various citizen transactions, and while trying to keep pace with the developed countries in the development of open data, Qatar still needs many steps and initiatives to promote e-government by relying on Open Government Data. The reliance of Qatar's Government on open data would encourage individuals to participate in decision-making, facilitate citizens' access to the required information, and increase citizen adoption of e-government. The research also concluded that Open Government Data (OGD) represents a new stage in activating the implementation of the e-government of Qatar, as it helps in achieving the basic objectives that the e-government seeks to achieve. The application of OGD initiatives may be a challenge for developing countries, due to several reasons, such as poor coordination among various government agencies, poor quality of published data, and the absence of laws and regulations that govern and control the nature of such initiatives. The research recommended in developing an Open Government Data strategy. This strategy will represent the road map for the Qatari government to activate the application of OGD initiatives. The research also recommended in establishing a framework for OGD, develop a legislative framework for OGD initiatives to control these initiatives and raise their success rate and enhancing the use of Web 2.0 regarding its significant benefits, since this web allowing the user for data modification and access to it when needed

Public policy: turning open data into democratic data - Portal Quality Assessment - Comparative Analysis

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Knowledge Management and Business IntelligenceAs data, information, and their respective provisioning gets more and more ubiquitous, people start to look for - and even demand - transparency and data to support the policies in effect right now that, either directly or indirectly, affects them. There are many expectations related with Open Government Data initiatives, such as improving policymaking, increase in transparency of government spending, advance citizen engagement with the institutions, etc. This master’s proposal aims to offer research that pertains to this theme; including an in depth look into one of the most reputed OGD maturity report (EU Open Data Maturity Report), a systematic literature review of Open Data’s main objectives and goals, the influence on publication of scientific literature as well as the potential socio-economic and transparency impact they may have, in order to proceed to an assessment of the portal quality in Portugal by evaluating the usage of its data on scientific papers and articles; through the usage of bibliometrics and PRISMA methodology. My thesis research drills down on these topics: What are the most used Portuguese OGD portals in academic literature? What are the authors that make the most use of Portuguese OGD portals? What characterizes the authors and the publications

Towards A Taxonomy of Emerging Topics in Open Government Data: A Bibliometric Mapping Approach

The purpose of this paper is to capture the emerging research topics in Open Government Data (OGD) through a bibliometric mapping approach. Previous OGD research has covered the evolution of the discipline with the application of bibliometric mapping tools. However, none of these studies have extended the bibliometric mapping approach for taxonomy building. Realizing this potential, we used a bibliometric tool to perform keyword analysis as a foundation for taxonomy construction. A set of keyword clusters was constructed, and qualitative analysis software was used for taxonomy creation. Emerging topics were identified in a taxonomy form. This study contributes towards the development of an OGD taxonomy. This study contributes to the procedural realignment of a past study by incorporating taxonomy building elements for taxonomy creation. These contributions are significant because there is insufficient taxonomy research in the OGD discipline. The taxonomy building procedures extended in this study are applicable to other fields

CLOUD-BASED SOLUTIONS IMPROVING TRANSPARENCY, OPENNESS AND EFFICIENCY OF OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA

A central pillar of open government programs is the disclosure of data held by public agencies using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This disclosure relies on the creation of open data portals (e.g. Data.gov) and has subsequently been associated with the expression Open Government Data (OGD). The overall goal of these governmental initiatives is not limited to enhance transparency of public sectors but aims to raise awareness of how released data can be put to use in order to enable the creation of new products and services by private sectors. Despite the usage of technological platforms to facilitate access to government data, open data portals continue to be organized in order to serve the goals of public agencies without opening the doors to public accountability, information transparency, public scrutiny, etc. This thesis considers the basic aspects of OGD including the definition of technical models for organizing such complex contexts, the identification of techniques for combining data from several portals and the proposal of user interfaces that focus on citizen-centred usability. In order to deal with the above issues, this thesis presents a holistic approach to OGD that aims to go beyond problems inherent their simple disclosure by providing a tentative answer to the following questions: 1) To what extent do the OGD-based applications contribute towards the creation of innovative, value-added services? 2) What technical solutions could increase the strength of this contribution? 3) Can Web 2.0 and Cloud technologies favour the development of OGD apps? 4) How should be designed a common framework for developing OGD apps that rely on multiple OGD portals and external web resources? In particular, this thesis is focused on devising computational environments that leverage the content of OGD portals (supporting the initial phase of data disclosure) for the creation of new services that add value to the original data. The thesis is organized as follows. In order to offer a general view about OGD, some important aspects about open data initiatives are presented including their state of art, the existing approaches for publishing and consuming OGD across web resources, and the factors shaping the value generated through government data portals. Then, an architectural framework is proposed that gathers OGD from multiple sites and supports the development of cloud-based apps that leverage these data according to potentially different exploitation roots ranging from traditional business to specialized supports for citizens. The proposed framework is validated by two cloud-based apps, namely ODMap (Open Data Mapping) and NESSIE (A Network-based Environment Supporting Spatial Information Exploration). In particular, ODMap supports citizens in searching and accessing OGD from several web sites. NESSIE organizes data captured from real estate agencies and public agencies (i.e. municipalities, cadastral offices and chambers of commerce) in order to provide citizens with a geographic representation of real estate offers and relevant statistics about the price trend.A central pillar of open government programs is the disclosure of data held by public agencies using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This disclosure relies on the creation of open data portals (e.g. Data.gov) and has subsequently been associated with the expression Open Government Data (OGD). The overall goal of these governmental initiatives is not limited to enhance transparency of public sectors but aims to raise awareness of how released data can be put to use in order to enable the creation of new products and services by private sectors. Despite the usage of technological platforms to facilitate access to government data, open data portals continue to be organized in order to serve the goals of public agencies without opening the doors to public accountability, information transparency, public scrutiny, etc. This thesis considers the basic aspects of OGD including the definition of technical models for organizing such complex contexts, the identification of techniques for combining data from several portals and the proposal of user interfaces that focus on citizen-centred usability. In order to deal with the above issues, this thesis presents a holistic approach to OGD that aims to go beyond problems inherent their simple disclosure by providing a tentative answer to the following questions: 1) To what extent do the OGD-based applications contribute towards the creation of innovative, value-added services? 2) What technical solutions could increase the strength of this contribution? 3) Can Web 2.0 and Cloud technologies favour the development of OGD apps? 4) How should be designed a common framework for developing OGD apps that rely on multiple OGD portals and external web resources? In particular, this thesis is focused on devising computational environments that leverage the content of OGD portals (supporting the initial phase of data disclosure) for the creation of new services that add value to the original data. The thesis is organized as follows. In order to offer a general view about OGD, some important aspects about open data initiatives are presented including their state of art, the existing approaches for publishing and consuming OGD across web resources, and the factors shaping the value generated through government data portals. Then, an architectural framework is proposed that gathers OGD from multiple sites and supports the development of cloud-based apps that leverage these data according to potentially different exploitation roots ranging from traditional business to specialized supports for citizens. The proposed framework is validated by two cloud-based apps, namely ODMap (Open Data Mapping) and NESSIE (A Network-based Environment Supporting Spatial Information Exploration). In particular, ODMap supports citizens in searching and accessing OGD from several web sites. NESSIE organizes data captured from real estate agencies and public agencies (i.e. municipalities, cadastral offices and chambers of commerce) in order to provide citizens with a geographic representation of real estate offers and relevant statistics about the price trend

Digital Re-imagination Colloquium 2018: Preparing South Africa for a Digital Future through e-Skills

The theme of the 2018 colloquium, "Digital Re-imagination: Preparing South Africa for a Digital Future through e-Skills" sought to establish an innovative research network through providing a platform for government, academia, industry, education and civil society to share research, data and trends that will contribute to refining the mandate to develop the necessary e-skills capacity of South Africa With the dawn of every new age, the nature of work and our relationships change. The impact of these changes to the digital economy affect entire systems of production, management, and governance. For example, government is currently designed as linear and mechanistic yet the digital economy is made up of adaptive systems. William Gibson has famously been quoted for the phrase: "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." Given the extant amount of data available today, it is now possible to predict (within some margins of error) how people will behave in certain situations. Data is increasingly becoming better structured and easy to access. The question is, are we ready for the future? Are we ready to harness the opportunities that the digital economy has brought? Can the digital economy make a better South Africa for all? Technology today is able to perform exponentially better than we can; how then can we create new industries and new forms of governance? It is critical to re-think how systems are being implemented. Creativity and innovation is big business in the digital economy. Creativity and innovation moves contributions to beyond the individual and the group - to societal, disciplinary, national and global level. The prevalent economic paradigm of a winner who takes it all means that the lower income earners are increasingly more dissatisfied. One of the symptoms of any illness is pain. Pain can be seen in our society in the form of unemployment, poverty and the dissatisfaction with the status quo. The challenges in our society cry out for change - a new way of thinking about employment, wealth creation and governance. What are the real opportunities that the digital economy presents to the people of South Africa? Real opportunities are those which are not only available substantively, but are also achievable by the people for who they are created. The opportunities presented by the digital economy can only become real if we e-skill people to take advantage of those opportunities. Countries in the East have been able to adapt technologies without giving up the cultural values they hold dear. While the challenges we face in South Africa may be seen as a problem, they also present an opportunity to make a difference with Digital Skills. It is no longer enough to have a skill; technology, talent and insight are becoming critical as well. The colloquium received 13 submissions. These submissions include four full papers, one concept note and eight abstracts. The submissions were all blind peer reviewed by at least two reviewers. None of the authors nor editors were involved in reviewing their own submissions.ICT4D Flagship, University of South Africa National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa (NEMISA)School of Computin

Causal mechanisms that enable institutionalisation of open government data in Kenya

Open Government Data (OGD) has become a topic of prominence during the last decade. However, most governments have not realized the desired outcomes from OGD, which implies that the envisaged value streams have not been realized. This study defines three objectives that will help address this shortcoming. First, it seeks to identify the causal mechanisms that lead to effective institutionalization and sustainability of OGD initiatives in a developing country context. Second, it seeks to identify the social, economic, cultural, political structures and components that describe the OGD context. Third, it seeks to identify the underlying contextmechanism- outcome (CMO) configurations in the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI). The guiding philosophy for this qualitative study is critical realism, which is implemented using Pawson & Tilley's realist evaluation model. Data is obtained through observation of open data events, semi-structured interviews and documentary materials from websites and policy documents. Fereday & Muir-Cochrane's five-stage thematic analysis model is applied in conducting data analysis. Three main contributions arise from this study. The first contribution is the open data institutionalization analysis guide. This study collates several institutionalization concepts from literature with the aim of developing a lens for analyzing OGD initiatives. The second contribution is the identification of supporting mechanisms, including a description of the current CMO configurations. The resulting case study provides an in-depth account of KODI between 2011 and 2016. This will assist policy makers in understanding the current setup, identifying gaps, and establishing or supporting existing support structures and mechanisms. The third contribution is related to scarcity of empirical work based on critical realism in the field of information systems. This research will act as a reference point for future IS research, in determining how critical realism can be applied to conduct similar studies

Situating Open Data

Open data and its effects on society are always woven into infrastructural legacies, social relations, and the political economy. This raises questions about how our understanding and engagement with open data shifts when we focus on its situated use. To shed a light on these questions, Situating Open Data provides several empirical accounts of open data practices, the local implementation of global initiatives, and the development of new open data ecosystems. Drawing on case studies in different countries and contexts, the chapters demonstrate the practices and actors involved in open government data initiatives unfolding within different socio-political settings. The book proposes three recommendations for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. First, beyond upskilling through data literacy programmes, open data initiatives should be specified through the kinds of data practices and effects they generate. Second, global visions of open data implementation require more studies of the resonances and tensions created in localised initiatives. And third, research into open data ecosystems requires more attention to the histories and legacies of information infrastructures and how these shape who benefits from open data flows. As such, this volume departs from the framing of data as a resource to be deployed. Instead, it proposes a prism of different data practices in different contexts through which to study the social relations, capacities, infrastructural histories and power structures affecting open data initiatives. It is hoped that the contributions collected in Situating Open Data will spark critical reflection about the way open data is locally practiced and implemented. The contributions should be of interest to open data researchers, advocates, and those in or advising government administrations designing and rolling out effective open data initiatives