Analytics-Driven Digital Platform for Regional Growth and Development: A Case Study from Norway

In this paper, we present the growth barometer (Vekstbarometer in Norwegian), which is a digital platform that provides the development trends in the regional context in a visual and user-friendly way. The platform is developed to use open data from different sources that is presented mainly in five main groups: goals, premises or prerequisites for growth, industries, growth, and expectations. Furthermore, it also helps to improve decision-making and transparency, as well as provide new knowledge for research and society. The platform uses sensitive and non-sensitive open data. In contrast to other similar digital platforms from Norway, where the data is presented as raw data or with basic level of presentations, our platform is advantageous since it provides a range of options for visualization that makes the statistics more comprehensive.Comment: The Thirteenth International Conference on Digital Society and eGovernments (ICDS 2019

Mining a MOOC to examine international views of the “Smart City”

Increasing numbers of cities are focussed on using technology to become “Smart”. Many of these Smart City programmes are starting to go beyond a technological focus to also explore the value of a more inclusive approach that values the input of citizens. However, the insights gained from working with citizens are typically focused around a single town or city. In this paper we explore whether it is possible to understand people’s opinions and views on the Smart City topics of Open Data, privacy and leadership by examining comments left on a Smart City MOOC that has been delivered internationally. In doing so we start to explore whether MOOCs can provide a lens for examining views on different facets of the Smart City agenda from a global audience, albeit limited to the demographic of the typical MOOC user

“The Great Data Revolution”: Breaking Barriers to Opening Government Data in China

This poster reports on a research study that aims to identify and overcome barriers that hinder the release of open government data (OGD) in China. Specifically, this poster demonstrates initial findings drawn from a critical literature review. 15 barriers were identified and emerged in three themes: institutional barriers, data integrity and quality barriers, and user participation barriers. This poster presents one of the early research efforts investigating the problems of releasing OGD in China

What’s going on in my city? Recommender systems and electronic participatory budgeting

In this paper, we present electronic participatory budgeting (ePB) as a novel application domain for recommender systems. On public data from the ePB platforms of three major US cities – Cambridge, Miami and New York City–, we evaluate various methods that exploit heterogeneous sources and models of user preferences to provide personalized recommendations of citizen proposals. We show that depending on characteristics of the cities and their participatory processes, particular methods are more effective than others for each city. This result, together with open issues identified in the paper, call for further research in the area

Streamlining governmental processes by putting citizens in control of their personal data

Governments typically store large amounts of personal information on their citizens, such as a home address, marital status, and occupation, to offer public services. Because governments consist of various governmental agencies, multiple copies of this data often exist. This raises concerns regarding data consistency, privacy, and access control, especially under recent legal frameworks such as GDPR. To solve these problems, and to give citizens true control over their data, we explore an approach using the decentralised Solid ecosystem, which enables citizens to maintain their data in personal data pods. We have applied this approach to two high-impact use cases, where citizen information is stored in personal data pods, and both public and private organisations are selectively granted access. Our findings indicate that Solid allows reshaping the relationship between citizens, their personal data, and the applications they use in the public and private sector. We strongly believe that the insights from this Flemish Solid Pilot can speed up the process for public administrations and private organisations that want to put the users in control of their data

Portal de dados estatísticos do Nordeste Transmontano

Este artigo apresenta um projeto que visa resolver a lacuna da centralização de informação estatística referente aos municípios da região do nordeste transmontano de Portugal. Esta informação apesar de existir nas diversas entidades, encontra-se dispersa por diversos locais, alguma dela não se encontrando em formato digital, o que dificulta o processo de consulta e pesquisa para os utilizadores. O conceito de Open Data vai de encontro à massificação do acesso à informação de forma livre e acessível ao utilizador, para que este possa utilizá-la e até mesmo republicá-la sem restrições de direitos de autor. Exemplos de utilização deste conceito são o projeto Dataviva desenvolvido no Brasil, o European Data Portal com os dados estatísticos da Europa e também o observatório da complexidade económica que possui os dados do comércio internacional. Este projeto foi desenvolvido utilizando a ferramenta open source de catalogação, edição e visualização de dados denominada DKANinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A visual exploration workflow as enabler for the exploitation of Linked Open Data

Abstract. Semantically annotating and interlinking Open Data results in Linked Open Data which concisely and unambiguously describes a knowledge domain. However, the uptake of the Linked Data depends on its usefulness to non-Semantic Web experts. Failing to support data consumers to understand the added-value of Linked Data and possible exploitation opportunities could inhibit its diffusion. In this paper, we propose an interactive visual workflow for discovering and ex-ploring Linked Open Data. We implemented the workflow considering academic library metadata and carried out a qualitative evaluation. We assessed the work-flow’s potential impact on data consumers which bridges the offer: published Linked Open Data; and the demand as requests for: (i) higher quality data; and (ii) more applications that re-use data. More than 70 % of the 34 test users agreed that the workflow fulfills its goal: it facilitates non-Semantic Web experts to un-derstand the potential of Linked Open Data.

Public libraries’ service model for community open data engagement

While there has been a growing interest in open data utilization in community context, previous research pointed out that individuals’ participation in open data is low due to the various difficulties and lack of support. Public libraries are an essential role in citizen’s engagement with open data but they need resources and professional networks to guide them to initiate, organize, explain, and promote data services to their communities. Addressing this gap, this research aims to create a research-driven theoretical model for public libraries' open data engagement, named mCODE (the model for Community Open Data Engagement). The mCODE is unique in that it emphasizes the local context and community engagement, reflecting public libraries' strong position to address the place-based needs of their communities