Aligning core stakeholders' perspectives and issues in the open government data community

Abstract

Open Government Data (OGD) has gained momentum and a large number of portals have become available providing all kind of data. There are many practices available and all kind of technologies enabling the opening of data. Yet the field is fragmented and effective use of open data requires knowledge found in different communities. The goal of the proposed workshop is two-fold. First it aims to contribute to better and shared understanding of concerns across core stakeholder groups in the OGD community. Second, it intends to show and discuss how some emerging technological solutions in the social semantic web and linked data technology domain could effectively address some of these concerns when considered as a part of a sociotechnical ensemble.

The story of the sixth myth of open data and open government

“…According to a number of researchers, a key challenge is for users to make sense of the data (Artigas & Chun, 2013;Graves & Hendler, 2013;De Cesare et al, 2013;Cornford et al, 2013;Hoxha & Brahaj, 2011). Use of open data requires knowledge found in different communities, that is, across core stakeholder groups in the public data community (Ojo & Janssen, 2013). Cornford et al (2013) stated that the availability of public data solves nothing.…”

“…Cornford et al (2013) stated that the availability of public data solves nothing. The data needs to be interpreted and interpretation is always a function of a collective (Cornford et al, 2013;Ojo & Janssen, 2013). To make it easier to understand the data, one proposed solution is visualization (Artigas & Chun, 2013;Graves & Hendler, 2013).…”

Policy, Process, People and Public Data

“…Today, more and more public data are made available [18][19][20][21][22] and there is a lot of talk about potential benefits. Expected benefits are, for instance, transparency, collaboration, participation, economic and social value [23] which will result from innovative service development [24].…”

“…For instance, Lofi and Krestel [25] proposed combining information processing techniques with microblogging to increase transparency in political processes and to encourage internet users to participate. Furthermore, use of open data requires knowledge found in different communities, that is, across core stakeholder groups in the public data community [18]. The data needs to be interpreted and interpretation is always a function of a collective which makes it difficult for people to take part [18,26].…”

“…Furthermore, use of open data requires knowledge found in different communities, that is, across core stakeholder groups in the public data community [18]. The data needs to be interpreted and interpretation is always a function of a collective which makes it difficult for people to take part [18,26]. Graves and Hendler [20] therefore claim that there is an important portion of the population who could benefit from the use of public data but are unable do so because they cannot perform the essential operations needed to collect, process, merge and make sense of the data.…”