Is the Public Motivated to Engage in Open Data Innovation?

Abstract

Part 3: Policy and StakeholdersInternational audienceGovernments aim to increase democracy by engaging the public in using open data to develop mobile apps and citizen services. They make information available (open data) and organize innovation contests to stimulate innovation with the goal to make new services available for the public to use. But will the public take on the challenge to both develop and provide services to each other? In this paper we use a case study from public transportation to investigate the motivation for individuals and teams to participate in innovation contests. The results show that the motivation for participating is primarily related to fun and enjoyment. We argue that in order to better meet the goals of open data innovation, governments need to follow through the full service innovation cycle and also care for making citizen coproduction in the execution and monitoring phases fun and enjoyable. Currently there is little chance for participants to make profit on a competitive market so governments need to provide other mechanisms to ensure service provisioning. For future research it is suggested to investigate how the later stages of open data innovation can be supported in order to meet the overall goals of open data innovation

A Framework for Data-Driven Public Service Co-production

“…There is rich evidence stating that OGD has the potential to drive innovation [1], [9], [10], [36], it allows for increased levels of transparency [1], helps drive the creation or implementation of new public services [1], [4], [9], [36] and helps empower citizens and communities [1]. However, there are also barriers that seem to inhibit these benefits from manifesting.…”

“…However, there are also barriers that seem to inhibit these benefits from manifesting. Some of the main barriers in the literature include issues with data quality [1], [2], [3], [36], lack of government willpower [1], [2], [3], [11], [26], confidentiality issues [5], [10], [12], and absence of understanding of OGD [1], [3], [11], [13], [36]. It is clear that OGD may be used to drive innovation and change how public services are created.…”

Citizens’ Motivations for Engaging in Open Data Hackathons

“…We include six publications which are deemed relevant for this study (see Table 3). Based on the selected papers, we observed that many factors influence citizens to engage with OGD or to engage in an open data hackathon: intrinsic motivations such as fun and enjoyment and intellectual challenge [12]; extrinsic motivations concerning performance expectancy [13] or relative advantage [16], learning and developing skills, and networking [11,12]; effort expectancy [13] related to ease of use [17]; social influence [13,18] including contributing to societal benefits [11,18]; and data quality [18].…”

“…Although research on the socio-technical conditions of OGD utilization, both enabling and disabling factors, has been widely established [10], yet only a handful of studies investigate the drivers of citizen engagement in open data hackathons [11]. Previous research showed that citizens' motivations to participate in hackathons are heterogeneous [12]. For instance, in a Swedish hackathon on public transportation, the motivation is primarily associated with fun and enjoyment [12], while in a Brazilian city hackathon, contributing to solutions of social problems and networking are the main drivers [11].…”

“…Previous research showed that citizens' motivations to participate in hackathons are heterogeneous [12]. For instance, in a Swedish hackathon on public transportation, the motivation is primarily associated with fun and enjoyment [12], while in a Brazilian city hackathon, contributing to solutions of social problems and networking are the main drivers [11]. These studies show the need to differentiate between different types of open data hackathons and instead of black boxing citizen engagement with OGD, the context should be taken into account [13].…”