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Open Government pp 115–135Cite as

Barriers and Development Directions for the Publication and Usage of Open Data: A Socio-Technical View

Part of the Public Administration and Information Technology book series (PAIT,volume 4)

Abstract

Open data have considerable potential to provide citizens, researchers, companies and other stakeholders with many advantages, such as a growing economy by stimulating innovation and increased transparency. Nevertheless, the process in which data are created, published, found, analysed, processed and discussed, which is here referred to as the open data process, consists of many complexities and complex relationships among social and technical aspects. Often the complexity, dynamics and heterogeneity of the open data process are neglected, and extensive overviews of barriers for the open data process are lacking. Hence, in this chapter, the questions asked are (1) which socio-technical barriers exist in the open data process and (2) which development directions could be derived from this overview of barriers. Our overview shows that many barriers can be identified with regard to data creation, publication, finding, analysing, processing, discussion and providing feedback. Activities early in the open data process could result in or increase barriers later in the process. Furthermore, the analysis of barriers for the open data process showed the importance of combining a social and technical view to overcome the barriers. A number of development directions for open data are identified. The findings suggest that, to be able to realize the benefits of open data, both social and technical barriers should be considered and an integrated approach to successfully counteract these barriers should be taken. In this integral approach, the social and technical barriers should be dealt with simultaneously rather than separately to successfully realize the benefits of open data.

Keywords

  • Open data
  • e-Government
  • Open government
  • Barriers
  • Challenges - development directions
  • Socio-technical
  • Infrastructure

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. 1.

    This chapter builds on a paper that was written for and presented at the International Conference on E-Democracy and Open Government 2013 (Zuiderwijk, Janssen, & Jeffery, 2013) and has been extended and refined significantly.

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Acknowledgment

This chapter is related to the ENGAGE FP7 Infrastructure Project. More information can be found at www.engage-project.eu and www.engagedata.eu. The authors would like to thank their colleagues of the ENGAGE project for their input for this chapter although the views expressed are the views of the authors and not necessarily of the project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX, Delft, The Netherlands

    Anneke Zuiderwijk & Marijn Janssen

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  1. Anneke Zuiderwijk
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  2. Marijn Janssen
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Correspondence to Anneke Zuiderwijk .

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  1. Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    Mila Gascó-Hernández

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Zuiderwijk, A., Janssen, M. (2014). Barriers and Development Directions for the Publication and Usage of Open Data: A Socio-Technical View. In: Gascó-Hernández, M. (eds) Open Government. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 4. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9563-5_8

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