Governance Models for Creating Public Value in Open Data Initiatives

This chapter aims to demonstrate and understand how open government data can generate public value by allowing any actor to co-create an open government data-driven public service. The chapter takes a holistic approach to understanding open government data-driven co-creation and follows a content-context-process approach for the framework development. The framework proposes a public service co-creation cycle based around the ideas of agile and lean development that should lead to increased usage of open government data. The co-creation cycle is made up of four parts: co-initiation, co-design, co-implementation, and co-evaluation. To test the propositions put forth by the framework, a multi-case study was conducted on five different pilot projects that aimed to use open government data in the co-creation of new public services. The pilots were conducted at different levels of government and across different public domains. The results of the study seem to support the propositions outlined by the framework, though it also emerged that the pilots that engaged in co-implementation had higher levels of user engagement and satisfaction with the service; this warrants future empirical research.

In order to facilitate and coordinate the sharing of spatial data, governments worldwide have been developing Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) for many years. Recently, technological, institutional and societal developments have caused these SDIs to shift towards more open infrastructures in which non-governmental actors are embraced as key stakeholders of the infrastructure. This move towards more open SDIs created additional challenges related to the governance of the infrastructure and required the implementation of new and additional governance approaches and instruments. This chapter analyses the governance of United Kingdom’s open spatial data infrastructure, by examining the different governance instruments used in the past 10 years for governing the relationships and dependencies with non-government actors. The analysis demonstrates how governance of the open spatial data infrastructure in the UK is achieved by combining various traditional governance instruments such as strategic management, joint decision-making, allocation of tasks and competencies, market-based governance and interorganizational culture and knowledge sharing.

Although state governments in the United States have increasingly implemented open government data (OGD) portals for fiscal transparency, they differ in the extent to which the portals provide the financial data. In this paper, we apply Moore’s public value framework to analyze the factors that influence fiscal transparency through the OGD portals. Complementary methods of cluster analysis and case study provide insights into the patterns of OGD transparency and the factors with respect to the external authorizing environment and internal operational capability. We argue that enabling transparency legislation, responsive elected leadership to the constituency, and adapting to the rapidly evolving digital environment are important factors at the external level. Committed leadership, inter-agency collaboration, funding, and an organizational culture of transparency are important factors at the internal level.

This chapter presents the results of the analysis of the open government initiative in the city of São Paulo. The theoretical-methodological structure built in the doctoral research promoted the evolution of the debate about openness through the debate of the ecosystem of open government with several actors. We combine the theoretical discussion of e-participation and model in three-dimensional layers to address the political program, project management, and sociotechnical tools that make up the open government ecosystem. In addition, the results indicate the need for the evolution of open government strategies to an ecosystem capable of integrating several parties in the development of public policies; for this, it is necessary to invest in “collaborative data” between society, private organizations, and the government sector. We analyzed the limits and potentialities of municipal government openness in the city of São Paulo, in the management of Fernando Haddad, examining the “Programa de Metas 2013–2016,” “Plataforma do Planeja Sampa,” and “São Paulo Aberta.” The results indicate how initiatives vary in relation to the implementation of strategies, management of strategies, and their capacity to influence as policies. The opening strategy is promising only as the first steps of the policy cycle-formulation, agenda, and decision-making. For this chapter, we present the need to refine and re-elaborate the concept of open government from the ecosystem.

Open Data initiatives in public sector frameworks have been poised to be one of the most effective levers for stamping out corruption in public sector organisations. Developing world countries which are endowed with resource constraints are slowly jumping onto the bandwagon to ensure that the governance of information is being put in public domains for effective public scrutiny. To this end, there have been many interventions that have been propagated by resource-constrained countries, one of them being Smart Cities. Smart Cities provide logical and physical information infrastructures which are a prerequisite to the implementation of contemporary Open Data initiatives. This chapter explores the status of realization of the different types of Open Data in the realm of Smart Cities, as well the different challenges that can be met in the implementation cycle of Open Data in Smart City environments. The definitive contribution of this chapter is that it proposes a conceptual framework modelled upon the developing world contextual nuances. This chapter also proposes that the conceptualised framework can be used in different environments with similar contextual attributes of the developing world countries in the design and implementation of Open Data Smart Cities.

The implementation of OG initiatives is favoring reforms moving public administrations to more collaborative and participative spaces with stakeholders. In Spain, fostered by the issuance of legislation, governments have formulated numerous action plans with the intention of achieving the objectives included in European Digital Agenda. This paper seeks to analyze the efforts made by the Spanish municipalities regarding the implementation of the OG initiatives with the aim at getting an overview of how these initiatives have been put into practice to increase the level of openness in these governments. Findings indicate that Spanish municipalities seem to be at the beginning of the process of OG implementation into their management processes, which is not being homogeneous in all municipalities. Also, these OG initiatives have not been addressed to promote more democratic governance models in sample municipalities.

The concept of open data has rapidly permeated the design and implementation of local government systems. Coupled with appropriate requisite and appropriate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), public services are delivered on open platforms and domains further opening up transparency and accountability. Embedded on Open Government Data and e-government, South Africa is pushing to mitigate corruption and inefficiency in its public delivery platforms, especially at the local government levels. Using extensive literature review exploring both scholarly sources, policy and strategy documents from both the public and private sector, this chapter aims to provide a deeper understanding of the role of open data by local municipalities in South Africa. It will briefly discuss the importance of open data to local government in order to benefit its community especially in the realm of contemporary public governance models, discuss ways of promoting citizen participation, and, most importantly, offer necessary aspects for municipal officials to consider before formalising transparency policies. It is intended to help local government officials take first steps in creating municipal transparency and openness policies.

There has been a sustainable development of the concept of blockchain as one of the key technology innovations changing the business landscapes. Blockchain has been used as a lever for enforcing accountability and responsiveness in different contemporary information and knowledge management environments. The core principle of blockchain is that it promotes the use of technology tools and platforms to achieve anonymous vetting of integrity for different types of information. Together with relatively new concepts such as Open Data, blockchain stands a chance to be practically utilised in different socio-economic establishments. The synthesis of blockchain and Open Data presently opens up requisite implementation of Freedom of Information (FoI) bills which many countries around the world have enacted into laws. A lot of researchers are jumping onto the bandwagon of exploring ways of how blockchain can be used in solving contemporary complex human problems. As a result, a lot of conceptual designs and underpinnings are coming up everyday from both practitioners and researchers. Anchoring the philosophical underpinning on descriptive informetrics, this chapter employs a focused and detailed bibliometric analysis of work that has been published in applied scholarly and practical outlets such as in Scorpus, Emerald, Elsevier, journals, etc., to delve deeper into the contours of blockchain. The chapter discusses formulaic definitions and concepts surrounding blockchain and Open Data with a special focus in the integration of the two concepts for practical application in real-world environments. It is hoped that exploring the formulaic underpinnings of blockchain and Open Data will open up avenues for consolidating their usage into the different contextual socio-economic set-ups.