Much has been written about how governments are creating open data platforms and are sharing data with the public.
Most of these platforms are designed for the reuse by professionals, such as journalists or researchers. Beyond visits to an open data portal it is however difficult to trace how data is actually used and if it pays out for public administrations to invest in open data efforts.
Similar to innovation, open data is assumed to be positive: it must lead to increased transparency and accountability – simply because of its existence.
In this paper, we used qualitative interviews with 15 U.S. cities that have created an open data portal and have an explicit open data strategy. We interviewed public managers responsible for open data in order to understand their perceptions of the outcomes of their open data activities.
As a result, we were able to trace both product innovations (apps, websites, etc.) and process innovations that are mostly internal to government.
The article is available online in open access format here.
Reference:
Mergel, I., Kleibrink, A., & Sörvik, J. (2018). Open data outcomes: US cities between product and process innovation. Government Information Quarterly.
