A longitudinal cross-sector analysis of open data portal service capability: The case of Australian local governments

Highlights

• Provides a longitudinal cross-sector analysis of open government data portals in Australian local governments

• Empirically examines open data portals as supply-side portal service capability

• Empirically examines open data policy intensity, open data provision, data format variety, and entrepreneurial data services

• Results indicate large variations in 20 local government portal capabilities, with noticeable leaders and laggards

• The leaders developed open data policy intensity which helped the development of open data portal service capabilities over time.

Abstract

While open government partnerships and open government data initiatives around the world have proliferated in practice, empirical research is required to better understand open data policy and open data portal capability which would spur meaningful citizen engagement towards co-production of open services innovation through open data reuse. Specifically, relatively little has been empirically investigated about open data portal as supply-side service capabilities at the local government level. In this longitudinal research on twenty open data portals in Australia's largest cities, cross-sector analysis results find large variation in open data portal service capabilities, which are measured by open data policy intensity, open data provision, data format variety, and entrepreneurial data services, including analytics tools, data modeling, and hackathon idea competitions. Longitudinal cross-sector analysis results also find the important roles played by open data policy and dedicated open data portal investment as predictors of open data portal service capability improvements over time.

Introduction

Open government data (OGD) has been seen as new mechanisms for achieving government transparency, civic engagement, and new forms of collaboration for open innovation which were primary goals of the Open Government Directive of the former Obama administration (U.S. Executive Office, 2009). Many other governments throughout the world have also implemented OGD initiatives (Janssen et al., 2012, Mergel and Desouza, 2013, Kassen, 2013, Zuiderwijk and Janssen, 2014, Conradie and Choenni, 2014, Meijer et al., 2014, Luna-Reyes et al., 2014, Veljković et al., 2014, Jetzek et al., 2014, Open Government Partnership, 2016). The concept of OGD underscores the recognition of OGD as valuable tangible or intangible resources at the government's disposal (Open Government Working Group, 2007, Alanazi and Chatfield, 2012).

The transformative potential of big and open data is notable for enhancing e-government services, openness, government transparency, citizen engagement, and the interaction between governments, citizens, and businesses (Bertot, Gorham, Jaeger, Sarin, & Choi, 2014). Moreover, it is widely held that reuse of OGD has the potential to generate open innovation (Zuiderwijk et al., 2014, Susha et al., 2015) and both economic and social values (Jetzek et al., 2014) in the big data and linked open data ecosystems (Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2014, Chen et al., 2014). In the short period, open government, open data, and open data policy research streams have gained traction (Janssen et al., 2012, Lee and Kwak, 2012, Kassen, 2013, Evans and Campos, 2013, Luna-Reyes et al., 2014, Zuiderwijk and Janssen, 2014, Veljković et al., 2014, Bates, 2014, Martin, 2014). The empowering potential of OGD realized at the local government level may provide a useful platform for promoting proactive citizen engagement (Kassen, 2013). Rather than an emergent view of open data portal as a “public e-service” (Lněnička, 2015, p. 589), however, there exists a simplistic view of open data which equates the government's open data provision with citizen engagement in reusing open data to create benefits (Janssen et al., 2012). Hence, the promotion of meaningful citizen engagement is one of the key challenges facing open government initiatives (Ganapati and Reddick, 2012, Luna-Reyes and Ae Chun, 2012, Evans and Campos, 2013).

Linders (2013) argues that while open data has made substantial contributions towards realizing a more integrated vision of international aid delivery, much of the potential of open data remains unexplored. Furthermore, Kassen (2013, p. 509) also argues that “in practice it is not yet clear how the potential of the open data concept can be realized at the local level as there has been no analysis of current projects thus far.” To date, however, “a comprehensive analysis of the capabilities and potential of these initiatives is currently missing from the recent research literature” (Petychakis, Vasileiou, Georgis, Mouzakitis, & Psarras, 2014, P. 34). There remains “the lack of a clear way to enable empirical analysis and quantitative measurements of OGD initiatives (Carrasco & Sobrepere, 2015, p. 633). Moreover, “little has been done to analyze and prove the impact and accrued value of these OGD initiatives.” (Ubaldi, 2013, p. 1) Finally, empirical research on open data portals at the sub-national level is still lacking (Thorsby, Stowers, Wolslegal, & Tunbuam, 2016).

To address the problem of these observed knowledge gaps, we raise a central research question in this paper:

Do open data portal service capabilities differ in terms of open data provision, data format variety, open data policy intensity, and entrepreneurial data services, including analytics tools, hackathon competitions, and data modeling?

In addressing the research question, we draw on prior OGD research to empirically analyze services and characteristics of OGD portals. In this paper, we define capability as the sophistication of open data service in terms of the key characteristics of the portal listed above in our research question. Prior research on open data portals identified the complexities of the issues involved in the implementation and operation of dynamically changing open data portals, including inadequate rewards for sharing data (Reichman, Jones, & Schildhauser, 2011), inadequate open data policy frameworks for big data (Bertot et al., 2014), data quality controls (Vetrò et al., 2016), data category standard (Thorsby et al., 2016), stimulating civic apps development (Lee, Almirall, & Wareham, 2015), and local challenges (Kassen, 2013, Conradie and Choenni, 2014). However, prior research including Thorsby et al. (2016) limited an analysis of open data portals to only one specific point of time. Since services and characteristics of open data portals are dynamically changing over time, we adopted a longitudinal cross-sector analysis methodology in evaluating twenty Australian open data portals at the local government level over two different time periods. In this paper, we aim to develop a better understanding of supply-side open data portal service capabilities which we view as essential for stimulating demand-side responses: citizen engagement and citizen co-production of open innovation.

The structure of the remaining paper is as follows. The second section presents theoretical foundation that aims to provide us a roadmap for conducting a longitudinal cross-sector analysis of services and characteristics of the operational open data portals. The third section describes the longitudinal research methodology adopted to answer the central research question. The fourth section presents our key findings. The fifth section presents our discussion and the sixth section presents our conclusions and policy recommendations.