Disintermediating Government: The role of Open Data and Smart Infrastructure

Governments are increasingly negotiating the adoption of civic technologies to improve government functioning and to better connect with citizens. Despite the benefits of civic technology to make government more efficient, effective, and transparent, there are many challenges and even unintended outcomes to civic technology adoption. This exploratory paper presents a conceptual argument using two types of civic technology; open data and smart city infrastructure, as examples where their procurement by government can disintermediate government from citizen. This disintermediation can have both positive and negative outcomes for different parties. Four mechanisms that drive this disintermediation are discussed, including the use of legal frameworks, jumping of scales, conversion of public to private goods, and the creation of standards. These mechanisms can serve to shift the role of government from a service provider to a more background role as a data custodian or regulator, opening many opportunities for other actors, including private sector to assume critical roles in service provision

A Conceptual Framework for Open Government Data: Drawing upon Conditions Surrounding Use

Public decision-makers’ interest in digital technology has fuelled the debate about the potential of open government data (OGD) as a foundation and driver for economic growth, competitiveness, innovation, job creation, and soci- etal progress in general. These potentials create high expectations sustained by a plethora of economic and societal forecasts about OGD. However, there appears to be a lack of scholarly literature about OGD use from which value stems. This paper addresses this concern by developing a conceptual framework scoping con- ditions surrounding OGD use. The conceptual framework, built on the literature, gathers three major components, i.e. (1) the characteristics of the datasets, (2) the features of the OGD portal, and (3) the organizational resources and capabilities, which altogether afford use. The paper also provides some insights for research- ers and policymakers. By structuring conditions surrounding OGD use in organ- izations, the framework allows to further distinguish between the opportunities offered by the OGD portal and respective datasets from the actualization of those opportunities by organizations throughout use

A Conceptual Framework for Open Government Data: Drawing upon Conditions Surrounding Use

Public decision-makers’ interest in digital technology has fuelled the debate about the potential of open government data (OGD) as a foundation and driver for economic growth, competitiveness, innovation, job creation, and societal progress in general. These potentials create high expectations sustained by a plethora of economic and societal forecasts about OGD. However, there appears to be a lack of scholarly literature about OGD use from which value stems. This paper addresses this concern by developing a conceptual framework scoping conditions surrounding OGD use. The conceptual framework, built on the literature, gathers three major components, i.e. (1) the characteristics of the datasets, (2) the features of the OGD portal, and (3) the organizational resources and capabilities, which altogether afford use. The paper also provides some insights for researchers and policymakers. By structuring conditions surrounding OGD use in organizations, the framework allows to further distinguish between the opportunities offered by the OGD portal and respective datasets from the actualization of those opportunities by organizations throughout use

Open data adoption in Australian government agencies: an exploratory study

Australia is among the leading countries that envisaged releasing unclassified public data under open license and reusable format with no further restriction on re/use. But, according to the Australian Information Commissioner John McMillan, Australia’s progress on open data is ‘patchy’ and ‘transitional’. He also evidenced that although a few agencies are proactive and have embraced the movements quite seriously, still there are “many obstacles that worked against effort to make government information and data discoverable and usable” (Hilvert 2013). Despondently, there is little empirical evidence that could explain what makes public departments not to release public data. Driven by the nature of the research, this study conducted an exploratory field study in Australia by interviewing eleven employees from six different government agencies. Applying content analysis technique, this study identifies six important antecedents to adoption of open data in public organisations, and proposes future research to test their relationships. As the main theoretical contribution, this study extends organisational behaviour toward technology diffusion. The findings of this study incite policymakers and managers to think about and prepare future strategies on open data developments

Assessing the Use of Government Open Data and the Role of Data Infomediaries The Case of Nova Scotia’s Community Counts Program

This article was first published in the JeDEM-eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government in Summer 2016, available online: http://www.jedem.org/index.php/jedem/article/view/370. This article is made available under the CC-BY 3.0 license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This study examines the Nova Scotia Community Counts program, a common platform that aggregates data from many sources mirroring what is generally considered as government open data. The role of Community Counts as a data infomediary adds additional value for both data providers and users within information-intensive open data ecosystems. While data literacy is a recurring issue in the open data world, Community Counts has been a success case for engaging the wider community, serving as a catalyst to improve data literacy. This study also reveals the importance of harnessing the social benefits of open data, as it provides additional incentive for users to engage in data, thereby increasing open data usage and allowing further value to be realized by a more diverse base of users.Peer-reviewe

Satisfaction with Open Government Data Portals: A User-Centric Configurational Perspective

Open Government Data (OGD) has become an important theme of digital transformation strategies as it promises data-driven innovation and greater transparency in government. Many governments have chosen to implement national data portals to grant access to large amounts of public sector datasets. However, the expected uptake by the economy and society has been slow, and criticism towards the basic idea of open government is growing. In this paper, we take an in-depth look at how the perceptions of the features of the portal lead to users’ satisfaction with the OGD portal. Taking a user- centred perspective, we apply a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis methodology to identify different configurations which lead users to be satisfied with the OGD portal. Based on our empirical analysis, we formulate concrete recommendations on how the results can be used to define tailor-based strategies targeting the features of the OGD portals

Open Government Data: Fostering Innovation

The provision of public information contributes to the enrichment and enhancement of the data produced by the government as part of its activities, and the transformation of heterogeneous data into information and knowledge. This process of opening changes the operational mode of public administrations, leveraging the data management, encouraging savings and especially in promoting the development of services in subsidiary and collaborative form between public and private entities. The demand for new services also promotes renewed entrepreneurship centred on responding to new social and territorial needs through new technologies. In this sense we speak of Open Data as an enabling infrastructure for the development of innovation and as an instrument to the development and diffusion of Innovation and Communications Technology (ICT) in the public system as well as creating space for innovation for businesses, particularly SMEs, based on the exploitation of information assets of the territory. The Open Data Trentino Project has initiated and fosters the process of opening of public information and develops as a natural consequence of this process of openness, the creation of innovative services for and with the citizens. In this paper we present how our project acts on long-chain, from raw data till reusable meaningful and scalable knowledge base that leads to the production of data reuse through the implementation of services that will enhance and transform the data into information capable of responding to specific questions efficiency and innovation

Factors influencing user acceptance of public sector big open data

In recent years Government departments and public/private organizations are becoming increasingly transparent with their data to establish the whole new paradigm of big open data. Increasing research interest arises from the claimed usability of big open data in improving public sector reforms, facilitating innovation, improving supplier and distribution networks and creating resilient supply chains that help improve the efficiency of public services. Despite the advantages of big open data for supply chain and operations management, there is severe shortage of empirical analyses in this field, especially with regards to its acceptance. To address this gap, in this paper we use an extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to empirically examine the factors affecting users’ behavioural intentions towards public sector big open data. We outline the importance of our model for operations and supply chain managers, the limitations of the study, and future research directions

State of the Art in Open Data Research: Insights from Existing Literature and a Research Agenda

Abstract With the proliferation of mobile network, mobile devices, and Web of things, many different industries including government departments, private firms, and research communities offer more transparency through releasing data. The resultant effort offers a new paradigm -open data -still at infancy stage though. Despite the rising research initiatives explaining its benefits and challenges, and demonstrating policy conception and project details, no systematic survey of extant literature on open data is performed yet. Such a study could examine open data from a holistic canvas, assess the current status of research and propose future direction. This study conducts a review of the extant literature in order to ascertain the current state of research on open data and present an extensive exploration for eleven different types of analyses: contexts, perspectives, level of analysis, research methods, the drivers, benefits, barriers, theory/model development, the most productive journals, authors, and institutions. Also, we present a number of future research agendas. This study also explains the implications to assist researchers, policy makers and journal editors