The Sustainable Value of Open Government Data

Building on the promise of open data, government agencies support a continuously growing number of open data initiatives that are driven mainly by expectations of unprecedented value generation from an underutilized resource. Although data, in general, have undoubtedly become an essential resource for the economy, it has remained largely unclear how, or even whether, open data repositories generate any significant value. We addressed this void with a study that examines how sustainable value is generated from open data. Subsequently, we developed a model that explains how open data generate sustainable value through two underlying mechanisms. The first, the information sharing mechanism, explicates how open data are beneficial to forging informational content that creates value for society through increased transparency and improved decision-making. The second, the market mechanism, explicates how open data are beneficial as a resource in products and services offered on the market, as well as how open data are used to make processes more efficient or to satisfy previously unmet needs. We tested and validated the model using PLS with secondary quantitative data from 76 countries. The study provides empirical support to the conjecture that openness of data as well as the digital governance and digital infrastructure in a country have a positive effect on the country’s level of sustainable value. Overall, the study provides empirical evidence in favor of nurturing open data culture and insights about the conditions that support turning it into sustainable value for the benefit of citizens, business organizations, and society at large

THE BENEFITS OF OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA USE: A CROSSCOUNTRY COMPARISON

Data produced by government have enormous importance; in addition to providing the information needed to run governance tasks related to internal processes, they can be used to create new sources of value by combining public datasets with private organisations’ data. In this regard, many countries have implemented Open Government Data (OGD) to unlock the potential value of public data. This study study is concerned with how government agencies create regulations about adopting OGD. The research examined five studies which investigated OGD programs in five different countries, and in one political and economic union. Drawing on the results of the analysis of the selected studies, it presents a list of categorised benefits based on OGD actors’ perspectives. Three categories of benefits are identified, namely 1) technical and operational, 2) economic, and 3) political and societal. This study gives a practical insight into how government agencies can use innovation to create, deliver and benefit from sustainable OGD value

Design and access statements as an assessment tool to promote quality sustainable development: reflections on practice in NE England

Planners play an important role in seeking sustainable urban design solutions, including making critical decisions on planning applications. Design decisions in planning have frequently been controversial and criticised as being subjective and too interventionist. Decisions on the design element of proposed developments are arrived at, by local planning authorities, using information provided by the applicant/developer, consideration of relevant local and national policy, observation by planners on site, views from the public and statutory consultees, negotiation between developers and planners and finally views of local councillors. This is a complex set of information and ways to clarify and expedite such decisions are needed. One recent attempt by the government to do this followed the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, 2004. Regulations came into force in August 2006 requiring developers to submit a Design and Access Statement (DAS) with most applications. A DAS is intended to assist design decision making in the planning process by clarifying the design approach of the applicant from the outset, so facilitating greater common understanding by all concerned. It appears the government is currently supporting constructive intervention by planning authorities on design issues, and so reinforcing the legitimacy of democratically accountable design decisions. The government hope that DAS will make the process and outcome of decision making more open, rigorous and sustainable. This paper seeks to briefly chart the background to government intervention in design decision making through planning. It then specifically investigates whether DAS are in fact perceived as improving decision making from the local planning authority perspective, as well as the developer perspective, using primary data from NE England. Comparisons are made with a recent national study by the Planning Advisory Service on DAS. This reveals different viewpoints on the extent to which the introduction of DAS is helping the design decision making process. Developers are more critical than LPAs, but all perceive some value in the process and offer views on potential improvements

GIS in an Age of Homeland Security: Accessing Public Information to Ensure a Sustainable Environment

Critical to the goal of achieving sustainable development is governments\u27 ability to maintain public information, including maps, charts, statistics, and narrative text, about a wide variety of environmental factors, indicators, resources, and threats in easily understandable formats that are readily accessible to the public. While federal and state freedom of information laws help to ensure a relatively high rate of public access to traditional information, such as environmental impact statements, studies and reports,significant environmental events and resources, and census data, the growing use and reliance on geographic information systems ( GIS ) has the potential to move the public discourse to a more sophisticated plane. The availability of this data, however, was seriously curtailed in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, despite a Rand report concluding that most of this information would either be of no value to terrorists, or was not uniquely available through government sponsored portals. Withholding important environmental and public health related GIS data compromises important values of our democracy, including government accountability to the people and an open and honest communication between the government and the people. While many may have understood the immediate post-September 11 reaction that produced such an unprecedented shut-down of many information pipelines, these quick reactions should have been temporary in nature, a brief moratorium of sorts. Now that four years have passed, it is time to re-open the flow of facts and figures. Achieving a sustainable environment is dependent upon the ability of the community to access relevant, accurate and timely information from its federal,state, and local governments

Theory and Empirics of Real Exchange Rates in Developing Countries

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of the real exchange rate for a small open economy, taking into account often overlooked characteristics of developing economies, such as the presence of significant aid flows, terms of trade variability, distorting trade taxes, and concentration of exports on natural resources. The equilibrium RER results from the intertemporal, optimal decisions of households on consumption, production, and trade of different goods, conditional upon government policies and external conditions. The model derives a concept of the sustainable current account based on the yield of the discounted present value of net exports which provides a rigorous framework for the computation of the equilibrium RER and misalignment indexes. We test the model in a sample of 73 developing countries in the 1970-2004 period using the PMG estimator proposed by Pesaran et al. (1999) and find it to be an encompassing representation of the data. We also develop a methodology to compute the misalignment of the real exchange rate, which requires to compute the permanent components of the determinants of the RER and to identify the equilibrium path for each country.Real exchange rates, general equilibrium, misalignment, panel data

Open Government Data and sustainable value : multi-case comparative analyses of software startups in Brazil

Trabalho de conclusão de curso (graduação)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade, Departamento de Administração, 2017.This work consists of a comparative analysis of three software startups that consider Open Government Data (OGD) as a key resource of their value propositions. The main objective involves describing and comparing the current and potential for multistakeholder value generation in startups that use Open Government Data. To do this, the author referred to OGD theories and compared them with the primary qualitative data collected. The value generation and the barriers to value delivery identified and analyzed. The external factors thought to influence the startups were contrasted, which contributed to the evaluation of the relationship that this group of OGD users with the overall OGD ecosystem. All of the primary source qualitative data information used was based on the perceptions of the startup’s founders collected through semi-structured interviews. The research is characterized as a descriptive and interpretative multi-case study. From the results obtained strong relationships were noticed between OGD and sustainable value, signaling the potential for these organizations to be multipliers of a scalable solution that generates sustainable value through OGD. The author hopes that the research enriches and creates trails of investigation regarding the potential for private sector startups to contribute to the evolution of the OGD Ecosystem

TRANSPARENCY-ORIENTED DIGITAL TRANSFOR-MATION: REASERCH ISSUES FOR OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA FROM POLICY DOCUMENTS

The digital transformation of government initially focused on the internal processes and work practices of government agencies, and then on the channels and ways of services provision to citizens and firms, as well as on the services themselves, and aimed mainly to increase efficiency. However, later it was extended towards the enhancement of government transparency and accountability, by exploiting the digital technologies in order to provide large amounts of information to citizens and firms about the activities and plans of government agencies, and recently to open and publish large datasets of them. This constitutes a big innovation/transformation, since previously government data were regarded as highly secret, and could be accessed only by limited numbers of competent public servants. The Open Government Data (OGD) have a great potential to promote not only government transparency and accountability, but also economic development (especially concerning the emerging data economy), scientific research as well as efficiency and effectiveness of other government agencies (beyond the one who publishes them). However, the OGD domain is relatively new, rapidly evolving, and has not reached and realized its full potential, so extensive research is required in order to support and facilitate progress in this direction, and finally increase the social and economic value generated from the large amounts of published OGD. So, it is quite important to define rationally the research agenda in this OGD domain: the main research areas as well as the particular research topics of each of them. For this purpose, some research has been conducted, which however is based exclusively on the review and analysis of previous scientific papers in this domain. In this paper we investigate the exploitation of recent OGD-related policy as well as legislation documents, as an additional and complementary source for extracting areas and topics in the OGD domain that require research in the near future. A methodology for this is developed, which is used in order to we analyse the ‘OECD Open Government Data Report – Enhancing Policy Maturity for Sustainable Impact’ and the EU Directive 2019/1024 on ‘Open Data and the Re-use of Public Sector Information’. This results in the identification of interesting new areas and topics of required OGD research, which are highly important and have not been identified by previous relevant research based on the review and analysis of scientific papers in this domain

Master\u27s Project: DASHBOARD 2.0: A Visual Storytelling Mechanism to Inspire Relationship Building, Participation, & Collaboration for Storytelling

The Aloha+ Challenge Dashboard 2.0 project explores an inclusive, decolonizing approach to advance sustainability in Hawaiʻi through the value of data and communications to inspire action. Due to its isolated location, rich biodiversity and natural and cultural resources, and strong and committed leadership and communities, Hawaiʻi is uniquely positioned to be a leader in sustainability, and to develop placed-based practices for sustainable living that can inspire others to create unique sustainable practices for their communities. This project seeks to advance sustainability outcomes through developing innovative community data capture mechanisms and compelling data visualizations for the State’s online open-data Dashboard which tracks Hawaiʻi’s sustainability goals - the Aloha+ Challenge - and serves as a mechanism for transparency, accountability, and action. This next phase of the Dashboard will be called “Dashboard 2.0”. The increased interactivity and engagement of communities and the next generation in sustainability efforts will advance these sustainability goals that have global context and prepare the next generation of leaders to continue to create a more sustainable future for Hawaiʻi and beyond. The success of the innovation and development of the new features for Dashboard 2.0 will be measured by feedback from users including Hawaiʻi practitioners, government, students, educators, and civil society

Mechanisms that are impacting the Kenya Open Data Initiative

Open Government Data (OGD) has become a topic of prominence during the last decade. However, most governments have not realised the desired outcomes from OGD, which implies that the envisaged value streams have not been realised. In order to help address this shortcoming, this study aims at identifying the candidate causal mechanisms that are impacting on OGD initiatives. This will be achieved through the lens of critical realism. This will assist implementers of OGD to formulate policies and structures that will help ensure that the initiative is sustainable and capable of achieving the set objectives and goals. Given the inadequacy of current literature on causal mechanisms that impact on OGD initiatives, it will also contribute to the existing OGD literature, mainly through the case studies and the causal mechanisms that will emerge

Classroom collaborations: enabling sustainability education via student-community co-learning

open access articlePurpose: This case study explores co-learning classes, a novel approach to leveraging universities’ capacity to contribute to the local sustainable development agenda whilst enhancing students’ learning. These participatory classes were piloted on a UK university Masters module focussed on action for sustainability. The classes sought to combine knowledge exchange, reflection and social network development, by bringing together students and community stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach: The classes were run as a series of five free events, each focussed on sustainability issues relevant for local practitioners. These were either regular timetabled sessions opened up to the public or additional on-campus public events. Attendance was either face-to-face or online. Evaluation was based upon participation data, written feedback and module leader’s post-event reflections. Findings: The classes successfully secured participation from diverse community members, including local government staff, voluntary sector workers, and interested individuals. Both students and community stakeholders valued the participatory format, linkages of theoretical and practical knowledge and diversity of attendees. Research limits/implications: Findings are based upon a small-scale pilot study. Further research using a wider range of contexts is required to enhance understanding of the co-learning approach. Practical implications: This paper highlights some key practical issues to consider if employing co-learning approaches in other contexts, including using inclusive language, aligning with students’ motivations and choosing appropriate focal event topics. Originality/value: Opening up participatory university classes for the public to attend as co-learners is a rarely used approach and has little coverage in academic literature. This small-scale study therefore has value by highlighting some of the potential impacts, strengths and limitations of this approach.https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJSHE-11-2018-0220/full/html#sec01