Open Government Data as an Innovation Process: Lessons from a Living Lab Experiment

Abstract

Open government data are claimed to contribute to transparency, citizen participation, collaboration, economic and public service development. From an innovation perspective, we explore the current gap between the promise and practice of open government data. Based on Strategic Niche Management (SNM), we identify different phases in the open data innovation process. This study uses a living lab in a province in the Netherlands to stimulate the provision and use of open data for collaborative processes and analyses the mechanisms that condition the success of this innovation process. The results based on six interventions over a period of two years show that our interventions stimulated the use of open data and raised awareness within government, but that various mechanisms inhibited the realization of the ambitions of open government data. We conclude that the challenge of open government data as an innovation lies in finding a way to scale up the provision of open data: innovation niches are established but "regime changes" do not take place. Scaling up open government data use requires strong managerial commitment and changes in the wider organizational landscape such as constructing formal and informal rules and technological developments that stimulate debate about open data practices. KEYWORDS innovation; open government data; strategic niche management; transparencyOpen government initiatives have become a major worldwide administrative reform (Piotrowski, 2017). Currently, 70 countries are participating in the international Open Government Partnership (OGP). Due to initiatives such as the Open Government Declaration of the OGP (Open Government Partnership, 2011) and the EU Directive on the reuse of public sector (2013/37/EU), and fueled by internet technology, pressure is being placed on government organizations around the world to release their data

Modelling the Asymmetrical Relationships between Digitalisation and Sustainable Competitiveness: A Cross-Country Configurational Analysis

“…Results show that besides improving ICT skills, countries like Qatar, UAE, and Oman by promoting ICT affordability for their citizens, and countries like India, Bangladesh, or Morocco by boosting ICT access, innovation environment, ICT usage, as well as business digital adoption could reach a higher level of GSC. For example, policymakers in these nations can facilitate open innovation initiatives such as living lab projects to develop smart city or smart health innovation environments (Ruijer and Meijer 2020;Shin 2019). In addition, some businesses in these countries might still be reluctant to comprehensively use and integrate ICT particularly when the expected benefits are outweighed by costs, or if they are not confident about the security and reliability of online transactions.…”

Analysis of Open Health Data Quality Using Data Object-Driven Approach to Data Quality Evaluation: Insights From a Latvian Context

“…Obviously, such an analysis and use of a data object-driven approach to data quality evaluation can be applied not only to open health(care) data but also to other structured and semi-structured data -this solution is effective in many domains. The advantages of the used approach are that (a) it can be applied to "foreign" data sets without any information on how data were accrued and processedit is an external mechanism with a higher level of abstraction, (b) it can be used even by users without IT and DQ knowledge that is highly important in order to improve data quality by increasing participation and inherent feedback on the quality of data sets (corresponds with (Attard et al, 2015;Ruijer et al, 2019)). Moreover, the quality of data in this way can be improved not only at the national level, but also at the international level as it was already demonstrated in (Bicevskis et al, 2018b, Nikiforova andBicevskis, 2019).…”

Different perceptions, different open government strategies: The case of local Mexican public managers

“…This approach is connected to the approach to e-government interoperability (Criado, 2012). In other contexts, collaboration is applied to the new public governance approach, involving the increasing engagement of private and third sector stakeholders in public management problem-solving and decision-making (Ansell & Torfing, 2014;Criado et al, 2020;Osborne, 2006;Ruijer & Meijer, 2019). Here, collaboration also highlights the importance of publicprivate partnerships and alliances in defining public problems, and using public innovation strategies to develop solutions which add public value to the concerned communities.…”