Exploring the Challenges of Using Open Government Data : A Social Representations Theory

Governments and researchers traditionally focus on the publication of Open Government Data (OGD), whereas the actual use of the data is often neglected. Open data initiatives are often criticized for not realising the promoted benefits, yet only the use of OGD can result in these benefits. OGD use requires several actors, activities and tools; however, these are fragmented and depending on each other. The OGD infrastructure presented in this dissertation aims to enhance the coordination of OGD use. Core components are an advanced and interoperable three-tier metadata model to find, analyse, visualise, interact about and assess OGD, interaction mechanisms to stimulate interaction between OGD users, OGD providers and governmental policy makers, and data quality indicators to assess the data’s fitness for use. This study is among the first to describe the design of an OGD infrastructure. This dissertation contributes to science by providing a comprehensive overview of barriers and functional requirements for OGD use from the perspective of the OGD user, by defining functional building blocks for the design of the OGD infrastructure, and by developing and evaluating a prototype of the OGD infrastructure. Furthermore, this study is the first to apply coordination theory in the field of OGD and shows that coordination of OGD use does not merely require a focus on processes, but additionally requires a technical perspective including the integration of tools, a social perspective including interaction between involved actors, and the interaction between the social and technical perspective. Moreover, while OGD infrastructures traditionally mainly provide discovery metadata, this study confirms several recent studies that different types of metadata (discovery, contextual and detailed metadata) need to be combined to improve OGD use. Finally, whereas kernel theories concerning coordination, metadata, interaction and data quality are often studied separately, this study reveals that it is essential for the development of OGD infrastructures to combine these four kernel theories.

PurposeCitizen engagement is key to the success of many Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives. However, not much is known regarding how this type of engagement emerges. This study aims to investigate the necessary conditions for the emergence of citizen-led engagement with OGD and to identify which factors stimulate this type of engagement.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the authors created a systematic overview of the literature to develop a conceptual model of conditions and factors of OGD citizen engagement at the societal, organizational and individual level. Second, the authors used the conceptual model to systematically study citizens’ engagement in the case of a particular OGD initiative, namely, the digitization of presidential election results data in Indonesia in 2014. The authors used multiple information sources, including interviews and documents, to explore the conditions and factors of OGD citizen-led engagement in this case.FindingsFrom the literature the authors identified five conditions for the emergence of OGD citizen-led engagement as follows: the availability of a legal and political framework that grants a mandate to open up government data, sufficient budgetary resources allocated for OGD provision, the availability of OGD feedback mechanisms, citizens’ perceived ease of engagement and motivated citizens. In the literature, the authors found six factors contributing to OGD engagement as follows: democratic culture, the availability of supporting institutional arrangements, the technical factors of OGD provision, the availability of citizens’ resources, the influence of social relationships and citizens’ perceived data quality. Some of these conditions and factors were found to be less important in the studied case, namely, citizens’ perceived ease of engagement and citizens’ perceived data quality. Moreover, the authors found several new conditions that were not mentioned in the studied literature, namely, citizens’ sense of urgency, competition among citizen-led OGD engagement initiatives, the diversity of citizens’ skills and capabilities and the intensive use of social media. The difference between the conditions and factors that played an important role in the case and those derived from the literature review might be because of the type of OGD engagement that the authors studied, namely, citizen-led engagement, without any government involvement.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings are derived using a single case study approach. Future research can investigate multiple cases and compare the conditions and factors for citizen-led engagement with OGD in different contexts.Practical implicationsThe conditions and factors for citizen-led engagement with OGD have been evaluated in practice and discussed with public managers and practitioners through interviews. Governmental organizations should prioritize and stimulate those conditions and factors that enhance OGD citizen engagement to create more value with OGD.Originality/valueWhile some research on government-led engagement with OGD exists, there is hardly any research on citizen-led engagement with OGD. This study is the first to develop a conceptual model of necessary conditions and factors for citizen engagement with OGD. Furthermore, the authors applied the developed multilevel conceptual model to a case study and gathered empirical evidence of OGD engagement and its contributions to solving societal problems, rather than staying at the conceptual level. This research can be used to investigate citizen engagement with OGD in other cases and offers possibilities for systematic cross-case lesson-drawing.

Open government data initiatives have been widely adopted by governments at all levels, offering the potential to transform interactions between governments and the public. Public value creation is one of the most significant opportunities associated with open government data (OGD) for various stakeholders, including public sector agencies, private businesses, academia, citizens, and civic organisations. However, OGD has little inherent value; it’s worth emerges through effective use. Therefore, supporting the use of OGD is considered key to delivering public value to individuals and communities.Indeed, making an effective impact with OGD requires users to activate its value. Through the use of OGD by governments, the public can be more involved in and collaborate on public service delivery and policymaking. Hence, OGD can serve as a supporting tool to enhance government performance and achieve public value<i>. </i>Despite emerging research on public value creation through OGD portal use, there is still a lack of theoretical frameworks to explain the factors affecting public value creation through OGD portal use by government employees in the public sector. Therefore, a comprehensive systematic literature review was undertaken to identify the factors influencing public value creation by governments using OGD in the public sector. A research model was developed based on the Delone and McLean (2003) IS success model, in combination with Moore’s (1995<i>) </i>public value theory. This study employed a sequential exploratory mixed methods approach, beginning with a quantitative phase followed by a qualitative phase to explain the quantitative findings. A structural equation modelling tool (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the online survey results, while NVivo software was used to analyse the findings from the semi-structured interviews. The model was validated in the Australian public sector.Meta-inference analysis of the survey and interview findings supports the validity of the research model and identifies the factors that significantly influence public value creation through the use of OGD in the Australian public sector. The findings reveal that employees’ use of the OGD portal and their satisfaction significantly affect the public value of OGD, while portal quality, open data quality, and service support have indirect effects. Furthermore, moderator analysis suggests that awareness of the value of OGD among public sector employees critically influences the delivery of public value.The proposed theoretical framework can be used to assess the factors affecting OGD public value creation by users in the public sector. This research contributes to the body of knowledge in the OGD domain from a public sector employee perspective and offers insights for researchers, developers, and policymakers to improve the use of OGD in the public sector.This study has practical implications for governments and policymakers regarding the importance of effective OGD use among employees in creating public value. Specifically, the results of this study strongly suggest that promoting OGD portal use, which leads to increased user satisfaction and, ultimately, delivers public value. OGD portal developers and government agencies responsible for providing open data must collaborate to better support portal users and address their needs and expectations. Additionally, it’s recommended that governments prioritize raising awareness of OGD, enhancing portal usability, and providing training programs for public sector employees. Future research can enrich the investigation of public value creation of OGD in other contexts and countries.

We compare the implementations and practices of open government and open government data in Mexico, Russia, and the US using a set of common concepts focused on policy environment and context. After providing thumbnail sketches of each country, we consider how variations among the countries are relate to context-specific historical problems, policies and politics From there we comment on the prospects for the institutionalization of open government and open data in each country.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the utility of Open Government Data (OGD) from the perspective of the PhD students in India.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews are conducted with 68 PhD students in India to solicit their perspectives regarding the utility of OGD for them. Convenience and snowball sampling was used for contacting the PhD students and the study was conducted among students of North India who are from public and private universities.FindingsWhile some PhD students tap OGD for their research work, others use OGD as informational tools for broadening their general knowledge. There are also some PhD students who do not use OGD at all. There are challenges associated with OGD usage by the PhD students. For instance, the outdated and incomplete data available on the government websites prevent their optimum use. Likewise, information available on the government websites needs to be revised on a regular basis for proper utilization in research.Research limitations/implicationsThe study approached PhD students for seeking their perspectives about OGD utility and further research is required with a large number of respondents. Nevertheless, the study leaves social and practical implications because while the study leaves insights for more involvement of PhD students in tapping OGD for their research, it also leaves recommendations for the policy-makers to take a pro-active stance by providing data sets regularly and accurately for improving government efficiency in public service delivery.Originality/valueHitherto, conceptual and theory-driven research on OGD has been undertaken and case study-based research works have been conducted to assess the challenges and prospects of OGD implementation in Western settings. Furthermore, prior research has solicited perspectives from stakeholders like public officials, politicians or citizens to investigate the difficulties in OGD use and policy-implementation. Identifying the research gaps in extant literature with respect to the aforesaid dimensions, this is the first study where the perspectives of Indian PhD students have been recorded in terms of the utility of OGD in research and other purposes.

Open government data (OGD) has gained much attention worldwide; however, there is still an increasing demand for exploring research from the perspective of its adoption and diffusion. Policymakers expect that OGD will be used on a large scale by the public, which will result in a range of benefits, such as: faith and trust in governments, innovation and development, and participatory governance. However, not much is known about which factors influence the citizens’ intention to use OGD. Therefore, this research aims at empirically investigating the factors that influence citizens’ intention to use OGD in a developing country using information systems theory. Improved knowledge and understanding of the influencing factors can assist policymakers in determining which policy initiatives they can take to increase the intention to widely use OGD. Upon conducting a survey and performing analysis, findings reveal that perceived usefulness, social approval, and enjoyment positively influences intention, whereas voluntariness of use negatively influences OGD use. Further, perceived usefulness is significantly affected by perceived ease of use, and OGD use is significantly affected by OGD use intention. However, surprisingly, the intention to use OGD is not significantly affected by perceived ease of use. The policymakers suggest increasing the intention to use OGD by considering significant factors.

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the use and acceptance of open government data (OGD) of different stakeholder groups in India.Design/methodology/approachFollowing an empirical investigation among 244 respondents in India, the paper deploys path analysis via LISREL. The conceptual construction of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) framework is used to assess the behavioral intention to use and accept OGD. Multiple regression analysis informs the relationship of demographic variables with the behavioral intention to use and accept OGD.FindingsPath analysis showed that there is an increased use and acceptance of OGD among the respondents. Multiple regression analysis shows that men are more likely to use open data sets than women. Individual differences are found among the respondents with regard to OGD usage. Thus, while men may tap open data sets in line with their purposes and professional backgrounds, women are likely to tap the data sets even for non-professional purposes. Furthermore, the respondents who are younger in age are more behaviorally inclined to accepting and using OGD than their older counterparts.Practical implicationsThe Indian government needs to popularize and familiarize OGD initiatives among the people to a greater extent. The utilitarian value of OGD may be provided when data sets are more user-friendly, frequently updated and accurate. This would facilitate in better provision of public services besides appreciating the public sentiment. Further, with increased interaction between citizens and the government, public accountability and transparency may be better realized.Social implicationsThe study shows that different groups of people are engaging in tapping information through government websites and related portals. Societal influence was found to be an important factor which predicts the acceptance and usage of OGD. An infrastructure can help to enable the use of OGD.Originality/valueHitherto, studies have focused on OGD initiatives in the developed countries, but extant literature is scarce on developing countries. Therefore, this study seeks to fill the literature gap by probing OGD use and acceptance among different stakeholder groups in India.

The usage of Open Government Data (OGD) can enable the government transparency for better governance, increase citizen collaboration, and promote innovation through public service improvement. OGD initiatives involve different stakeholders and complex publishing guidelines. In general, governments initiate OGD in their countries and provide the government-run portals to support the provision and consumption process of OGD. Insufficient usage of OGD and limited provision by the government is a great challenge to OGD development. Monitoring the operation and constantly analyzing the usage can be beneficial for OGD policymakers to gain insight into usage, to plan, and to enact the law to support the OGD initiative. This study proposes a Business Intelligence (BI) framework to analyze OGD portal datasets and its usage. The data from Thailand's OGD (ThOGD) portal was derived to validate our framework. The work focuses on designing and implementing the BI framework. We demonstrated the features of the prototyped BI system in supporting the analysis through various data visualization.

Public value creation is one of the most important opportunities of open government data (OGD) for different stakeholders including public sector agencies, private businesses, academia, citizens, and civic organizations. However, OGD has hardly any value on its own, yet the value is created by its use, hence supporting OGD portal use is a key point to delivering public value. Indeed, making an effective impact on OGD requires users to activate its value. Therefore, this study aims to propose a model to explore factors that hinder or facilitate public value creation using OGD from the public sector employee perspective. Using the DeLone and McLean (2003) model as a theoretical basis with the combination of the Moore (1995) framework, the study model was validated in the Australian public sector, using partial least square structural equation modelling. The results of this study support the validity of the research model and discover the factors that have a significant influence on public value creation through the use of OGD in the Australian public sector. Findings reveal that employee's OGD portal use and their satisfaction significantly predict the public value of OGD, while the OGD portal quality, open data quality and service support indirectly affect the public value of OGD. Furthermore, the moderator analysis suggests that awareness of the value of OGD among public sector employees has a critical effect on the delivery of public value. The proposed theoretical framework can be used to assess the factors affecting OGD public value creation by users in the public sector, which can help researchers and developers to improve and update their system, based on the results.

The open government data (OGD) movement claims to contribute to transparency and increased citizen understanding of government action. However, the literature so far shows these goals are not being reached, as ‘common’ (non-expert) citizens fail to access and understand OGD. This research makes an empirical contribution to this debate through a design experiment in the form of a field lab with a governmental agency, data visualization experts, and non-expert citizens in the Netherlands. In this field lab, the current practice of disseminating OGD by a regional water authority on the issue of drought was redesigned based on non-expert citizens’ needs. Our findings show that non-expert citizens prefer data storytelling techniques over OGD portals or traditional OGD visualizations such as graphs or dashboards. This is informative for the current shift from OGD geared at expert users, to OGD geared at fostering effective transparency with non-expert users. We also build on existing research to develop new evaluation criteria for OGD visualizations, and find that completeness and usability seem more important than objectivity in disseminating OGD with non-expert citizens when communicating about complex policy problems.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how social representation theory (SRT) can be used to understand the concept of resistance to change. SRT is a growing theory in social psychology research. SRT is about how individuals co-construct representations of various objects in different social settings. These social representations govern the attitudes and actions of individuals and groups. In spite of the growing interest in SRT in various fields, no studies have used SRT to understand resistance to organizational change.Design/methodology/approach– This study reviews the relevant literature on resistance to change and SRT to develop a conceptual framework for understanding resistance from the standpoint of SRT.Findings– The authors develop a model that illustrates how three interrelated objects, i.e. the organizational process and the pre-and post-change situation, are co-constructed in social contexts. Also, the authors discuss how representations of these objects can co-exist (cognitive polyphasia). Our study illustrates the complexity of resistance to change by deconstructing the concept.Originality/value– Application of SRT to analyze resistance to organizational change is a novel approach that provides several new insights. For example, where most publications regard advocates of change as sense-givers in the change recipient’s sense-making process, the authors argue for a more constructionist approach. Thus, all actors involved in the change process will affect each other and together co-construct the social representations. These social representations govern attitudes to change.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to review the levels of open government data (OGD) among various countries that are not consistent with the development levels of those countries. This study evaluates the associativity between OGD Index (OGD) and the characteristics of those countries as well as to compare the degree of OGD among countries. Accordingly, an advanced discussion to explore how a country’s characteristics affect how that country’s government opens data was presented.Design/methodology/approachThe stakeholder relationships of OGD is analysed with the characteristics of a country. The usage data are compared with the data availability according to nine indicators. These data collected from the statistics and OGDI websites are grouped for comparative statistical analyses based on basic descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance and a regression model with variance inflation faction.FindingsThe results 1) revealed the reasons some countries have high-ranking indexes and 2) verified the high index values of countries in terms of their degrees of development. This study, thus, attempted to derive a balanced appraisal of national development and OGD.Research limitations/implicationsThe study sample is limited only to countries 1) which open the statistical data; and 2) are of uneven population density and development degree. The OGDI is limited to expert evaluation. The score might be vary to experts and users with diverse countries at different evaluation period. The limitations can be attributed to the differences between OGDI and real open levels. These differences might influence the reliability and validity.Practical implicationsGovernment departments with OGD policies provide raw data in various formats and with application interfaces for user access. This study, thus, attempts to derive a balanced appraisal of national development and OGD. The factors that evaluate which types of countries open the level of data are explored.Originality/valueThis study establishes stakeholder relationships of OGD and extends to analyse the characteristics of a country and OGD that affect the government data open level. The relationships are evaluated through the OGDI with design score scheme. The measurement results indicated that a country possesses high relation to open data with high DI and nature resource.

The rate of development of open government data (OGD) portals has been fast in recent years due to potential benefits of the utilization of OGD. However, scholars have emphasized lack of use as a key problem in the realization of these benefits. Although studies have been carried out to understand decisive factors in OGD utilization from the aspects of either portals or users, they failed to consider the interaction between the two. Therefore, our study carried out an analysis of the interaction between users and OGD portals during users’ data acquisition process from three aspects: data acquisition methods, data quality requirements, and helping functions. We carried out a survey in a Chinese population to collect data for analysis. Results show users’ high acceptance of keyword search as their method for data acquisition through OGD portals but browsing showed higher usage frequency and was a more stable data acquisition behavior. Females show better acceptance of regular recommendations (e.g. RSS) based on their visiting histories than males. Users’ age, education background and occupation affect their demands of different data quality attributes. Our analysis also shows positive relationship between users’ data acquisition habits with their demands of data quality, users’ need of help with their feelings of difficulties in using the portal, and users’ need of help with their demands of data quality. We suggest promoting OGD utilization by offering better helping functions and improving data qualities in future development of OGD portals.

PurposeWith the worldwide open government data (OGD) movement and frequent public health emergencies in recent years, academic research on OGD for public health emergencies has been growing. However, it is not fully understood how to promote OGD on public health emergencies. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the factors that influence OGD on public health emergencies.Design/methodology/approachThe technology–organization–environment framework is applied to explore factors that influence OGD during COVID-19. It is argued that the effects of four key factors – technical capacity, organizational readiness, social attention and top-down pressure – are contingent on the severity of the pandemic. A unique data set was created by combining multiple data sources which include archival government data, a survey of 1,034 Chinese respondents during the COVID-19 outbreak and official COVID-19 reports.FindingsThe data analysis indicates that the four factors positively affect OGD, and pandemic severity strengthens the effects of technical capacity, organizational readiness and social attention on OGD.Originality/valueThis study provides theoretical insights regarding how to improve OGD during public health emergencies, which can guide government efforts in sharing data with the public when dealing with outbreak in the future.

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.