Exploring the quality of government open data. Comparison study of the UK, the USA and Korea
| Published date | 04 February 2019 |
| Date | 04 February 2019 |
| Pages | 35-48 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-06-2018-0124 |
| Author | Myongho Yi |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Exploring the quality of
government open data
Comparison study of the UK, the USA and Korea
Myongho Yi
Department of Library and Information Science,SangmyungUniversity,Seoul,Korea
Abstract
Purpose –The use of “open data”can help the public find value in various areas of interests. Many
governments have created and published a huge amount of open data; however, people have a hard time
using open data becauseof data quality issues. The UK, the USA and Korea have created and published open
data; however,the rate of open data implementation and level of open dataimpact is very low because of data
quality issueslike incompatible data formats and incomplete data. Thisstudy aims to compare the statuses of
data quality from open government sites in the UK, the USA and Korea and also present guidelines for
publishingdata format and enhancing data completeness.
Design/methodology/approach –This study uses statistical analysis of different data formats and
examinationof data completeness to explore key issues of data qualityin open government data.
Findings –Findings show that the USA and the UK have published morethan 50 per cent of open data in
level one. Korea has published 52.8 per cent of data in level three.Level one data are not machine-readable;
therefore, users have ahard time using them. The level one data are found in portable documentformat and
hyper text markup language(HTML) and are locked up in documents; therefore, machines cannotextract out
the data. Findingsshow that incomplete data are existing in all three governments’open data.
Originality/value –Governments should investigate data incompleteness of all open data and correct
incomplete data of the most used data. Governmentscan find the most used data easily by monitoring data
sets thathave been downloaded most frequently overa certain period.
Keywords Quality, Open data, Open government data, Completeness, Formats
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Vast amounts of data of many diverse types have beencreated. Laney (2013) defined these
types of data as big data. Social media data and open data are two major types of big data
(van Kessel, 2014). Social media data are generated using social media tools, such as
Facebook and Twitter (Majid et al.,2013). Open data, as the name reveals, is open to the
public. According to the Open Data Institute, open data is data that the public can access
and use (Hong, 2017). Open data is data that “can be freely used, modified, and shared by
anyone for any purpose”(Vetrò et al.,2016, p. 325). According to the Open Data Barometer,
open data plays an importantrole to ensure effective institutions and tosecure public access
to government information (Web Foundation, 2018). Many governments around the world
have joined the open data movement and made a large amount of open data in various
formats available to the public; however, there were insufficient prescribed guidelines in
which formats that data should be published. The use of open data has increased in
response to the economic opportunities presented by increasing availability and
implementationof open data. However, open data formats vary countryby country.
Because of the size and diversity of data, theirformats must be managed. Because there
were no guidelines for institutions to follow, open data was published in multiple and
Quality of
government
open data
35
Received26 June 2018
Revised19 November 2018
Accepted15 December 2018
TheElectronic Library
Vol.37 No. 1, 2019
pp. 35-48
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-06-2018-0124
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
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