A System of Innovation to Activate Practices on Open Data: The Open4Citizens Project (original) (raw)
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Licentiate thesis: Public sector open data - Shaping an arena for innovation and value creation
This research initially sprung out of a natural curiosity for the emerging phenomenon of open data with its combination of democratic perspectives, since it is based on freedom of information legislation, and its potential for a multitude of citizen driven innovations. Research showed that while open data repeatedly was being envisioned for having immense potential of leading to a multitude of innovations and societal impacts, most of the attention still remained on challenges related to enable a broad realisation of open data, that is, putting more data on the web. At the same time, research and reports indicated that open data was a more complex matter than expected, and that the release of open data was guarded by myths saying that opening up of data equalled instant benefits from open data use, and that open data initiatives were emerging too slowly. In general, the understanding of how to address open data so that the envisioned innovative potential was enabled remained a press...
Open Government Data in Practice: Stakeholder Attitudes and Behaviours Towards Open Data Initiatives
Open Data in Practice, 2019
The vision encoded into the open data movement is about creating transparency around the inner workings of government departments and creating economic benefit underpinned by methods used to transcribe and curate data for the purpose of re-use by third parties. While this vision is one that champions that all government data should be open by default unless there is good reason to, yet this vision remains partially released. Despite the barriers to accessing government data have been falling there is still a wall standing between open data values and its embodied practice. For this wall to begin to be dismantled, we need to examine how open data practices is incentivised and rewarded and what conceptions of data openness are given priority in the design of government policies and programs. Very few studies (except: Ruijer et al., 2018) have examined open data through a practice lens, opting for in favour studies of technical and data quality/format barriers. In this research we contribute to this narrow literature by adding an ethnographic and observational perspective on the study of situated open data practice based on action-based methods where public servant, citizens and others actively collaborate to solve problems using open data platforms under observed conditions. In this research, we pick up on what Sieber and Johnson (2015) call ‘data over the wall’, approach to managing open government data programs where governments publish their data via a portal and where interaction and participation with citizens is limited. However, in order to advance the goals of open government it is important to further reflect on the possibilities of open government data usage and not simply view publishing open government data as an end point (Sieber and Johnson, 2015 cited in Ruijer et al., 2018: 4). For most working in open data, the currency of data “openness” is measured by the number of datasets available for public use on dedicated open data portals. The production of novel, positive and creative uses of this data increases the likelihood of greater support and investment in open data programs. But, not only are such use-cases rare, use cases that increase the profile of open data in broader public discourse tend to arise when there are problems or issues arise around data availability, quality or security. However, in an environment where maintaining transparency of public sector operations, there is a trend for government workers to employ flexible and selective practices in the day-to-day running of open data programs and initiatives. While it is not our intention to mark certain open data practices as questionable or less suited than others, it is our intention in doing this research to uncover the range of operational and ideological positions on open data among open data workers themselves.
Open Government Data: Fostering Innovation
JeDEM - eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government
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 ter...
Reflections on the Concept of Open Data
Though “open data” is much discussed as a practice, it is much less discussed as a concept. There is consensus that open data is an emerging global social movement—an Open Data Movement—that encourages a shift in behaviour about performing data-centric tasks, such as governing or researching, to make them more connected and collaborative and thereby improve transparency, accountability, research discovery, knowledge access and knowledge co-production. But just what do we mean by the qualifying word “open”? Open data is understood to mean data resources that are: (1) free for people to access; (2) free from most legal constraints on reuse; and (3) put into formats that maximise interoperability and linkage. This definition, however, fails to fully address all the conceptual and policy issues at play in the Open Data Movement. In this analysis piece, I offer some critical reflections on the Open Data Movement and unpack the meaning of “open” data so as to offer a richer understanding of the concept.
Data Ownership and Open Data: The Potential for Data-Driven Policy Making
SpringerBriefs in applied sciences and technology, 2021
As part of the rhetoric surrounding the Smart City concept, cities are increasingly facing challenges related to data (management, governance, processing, storage, publishing etc.). The growing power acquired by the data market and the great relevance assigned to data ownership rather than to data-exploitation knowhow is affecting the development of a data culture and is slowing down the embedding of data-related expertise inside public administrations. Concurrently, policies call for more open data to foster service innovation and government transparency. What are the consequences of these phenomena when imagining the potential for policy making consequent to the growing data quantity and availability? Which strategic challenges and decisions do public authorities face in this regard? What are valuable approaches to arm public administrations in this "war on data"? The Smart Flanders program was initiated by the Flemish Government (Belgium) in 2017 to research and support cities with defining and implementing a common open data policy. As part of the program, a "maturity check" was performed, evaluating the cities on several quantitative and qualitative parameters. This exercise laid to bare some challenges in the field of open data and led to a checklist that cities can employ to begin tackling them, as well as a set of model clauses to be used in the procurement of new technologies.
Open Data as a New Commons. Empowering Citizens to Make Meaningful Use of a New Resource
Internet Science, 2017
An increasing computing capability is raising the opportunities to use a large amount of publicly available data for creating new applications and a new generation of public services. But while it is easy to find some early examples of services concerning control systems (e.g. traffic, meteo, telecommunication) and commercial applications (e.g. profiling systems), few examples are instead available about the use of data as a new resource for empowering citizens, i.e. supporting citizens' decisions about everyday life, political choices, organization of their movements, information about social, cultural and environmental opportunities around them and government choices. Developing spaces for enabling citizens to harness the opportunities coming from the use of this new resource, offers thus a substantial promise of social innovation. This means that open data is virtually a new resource that could become a new commons with the engagement of interested and active communities. The condition for open data becoming a new commons is that citizens become aware of the potential of this resource, that they use it for creating new services and that new practices and infrastructures are defined, that would support the use of such resource.
Public bodies retain, maintain and continue to acquire a wealth of information and content. To the degree that this information is in digital form, and given the pervasive nature of ICT technologies, the value of public sector information (PSI) as a resource is constantly increasing. A large potential of exploiting PSI is remaining untapped, waiting for innovative applications to create added-value by reusing the datasets that are offered today in new and exciting ways.
Open Data: Creating Communities and Practices for a New Common
2017
Open Data are increasingly seen as a new and very relevant resource, that can dramatically change the landscape of the services and infrastructure in urban environments. This opportunity is often conceptualized by defining open data as a new common. Open data however, are not necessarily a commons, at least in the sense defined by Bollier [1], they are rather a shareable resource, which will only be accessed and used if a community exists around them and a set of practices and rules are defined to manage them. This paper is focusing on those two aspects: the creation of a community of users and a set of practices that regulate and facilitate the use of open data. Communities and practices, the two elements that would turn open data into a common, are not emerging spontaneously; their emergence needs to be appropriately designed.
Open Data: A Paradigm Shift in the Heart of Government
Journal of Public Administration and Governance, 2014
In today's global economy, governments are coming to comprehend new realities and adopt new approaches to cope with the paradigm shift in citizens' relations. Among the different trends in recent years is the concept of open data where it requires governments placing more data for public consumption. The use and reuse of open data is argued to contribute to enormous potential for economies and citizens welfare. This article attempts to explore and provide a short overview of the concept of open data and its current applications. The primary contribution of the article is the presentation of a case study of how the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government envisages using open data to develop decision support models to improve public service delivery and primarily citizens’ quality of life. The presented approach aims to promote discussion among policy and decision-makers and fuel debate and knowledge development in this critical and evolving field of practice.