The associativity evaluation between open data and country characteristics

Pages337-364
Date01 April 2019
Published date01 April 2019
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/EL-04-2018-0081
AuthorYean-Fu Wen,Yi-Ting Hwang
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management
The associativity evaluation
between open data and country
characteristics
Yean-Fu Wen
Graduate Institute of Information Management, Research Center on Big Data and
Smart City, National Taipei University, New Taipei City, Taiwan, and
Yi-Ting Hwang
Department of Statistics, National Taipei University, New Taipei City, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this studyis to review the levels of open government data (OGD) among various
countries that are not consistent with the development levels of those countries. This study evaluates the
associativity between OGD Index(OGD) and the characteristics of those countries as well as to compare the
degree of OGD among countries. Accordingly, an advanced discussion to explore how a countrys
characteristicsaffect how that countrys governmentopens data was presented.
Design/methodology/approach The stakeholder relationships of OGD is analysed with the
characteristics of a country. The usage data are compared with the data availability according to nine
indicators.These data collected from the statistics and OGDI websites are groupedfor comparative statistical
analyses based on basic descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance and a regression model with
varianceination faction.
Findings The results 1) revealedthe reasons some countries have high-ranking indexes and 2) veriedthe
high index values of countriesin terms of their degrees of development. This study, thus,attempted to derive
a balanced appraisalof national development and OGD.
Research limitations/implications The study sample is limitedonly to countries 1) which open the
statistical data; and 2) are of uneven population density and development degree. The OGDI is limited to
expert evaluation.The score might be vary to experts and users with diverse countriesat different evaluation
period. The limitations can be attributed to the differences between OGDI and real open levels. These
differencesmight inuence the reliability and validity.
Practical implications Government departments with OGD policies provide raw data in various
formats and with application interfaces for user access. This study, thus, attempts to derive a balanced
appraisal of nationaldevelopment and OGD. The factors that evaluate whichtypes of countries open the level
of data are explored.
Originality/value This study establishes stakeholderrelationships of OGD and extends to analyse the
characteristics of a country and OGD that affect the government data open level. The relationships are
evaluated through the OGDI with design score scheme. The measurement results indicated that a country
possesseshigh relation to open data with high DI and natureresource.
Keywords Information technology strategy, Data analysis, E-governance, Open data,
Regression model, National characteristics
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Open government data (OGD) is dened as the concept that government data must be
accessible to achieve the goals of sharing, transparency, participation and collaboration as well
as to increase the data value (Attard et al., 2015;Harrison and Sayogo, 2014;Hu et al., 2009;
Associativity
evaluation
337
Received23 April 2018
Revised22 October 2018
23December 2018
7 January2019
7 February2019
Accepted12 March 2019
TheElectronic Library
Vol.37 No. 2, 2019
pp. 337-364
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-04-2018-0081
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
L
opez-Arceiz et al., 2017;Kassen, 2017;Veljkovi
cet al.,2014;Wang and Lo, 2016;Zeleti and
Ojo, 2017;Zuiderwijk and Janssen, 2014). OGD relies on a system of technological, economic
and legal avenues of user support and delivers online access to government data in standard
formats (Borglund and Engvall, 2014;Reichman et al.,2011;WWWF, 2015). General value-
added applications encompass the original functions of electronic government (e-government),
which has played an effective role even before open data (Pina et al., 2009;Veljkovi
cet al., 2014;
Zhao et al., 2014). Unlike early forms of e-government, the concept of OGD is that the
government provides raw data to citizens through transparent access mechanisms; thus,
citizens can function in a democratic society, respond to government initiatives and monitor
legitimacy (Attard et al., 2015).
The level to which OGD has been developed is related to the countrys degree of
development. The present work evaluates whether democratic, highly developed countries
achieve a high level of OGD. Whether a country belongs to the developed, developing or
undeveloped category, as shown in Appendix A, is related to its levels of economic
development (Paroški et al.,2013;Yanjie and Wan, 2013), technological sophistication and
standard of living. The developed countriesproduce precedents that other countries tend to
follow. Numerous OGD projects relate to national development, which causes different
approaches to openness. This study applied the Open Government Data Index (OGDI)
(http://global.census.okfn.org) to verify whetherthe political and cultural openness associate
to the developed degree of the countries.
The analysis scope of this work is based on the stakeholder,dened as a group or
individual who can affect or is affectedby OGD (Freeman, 1984). Mitchellet al. (1997) further
dened stakeholder as the one who owns power, urgency and legitimacy according to
demands and expectations. Factors affecting OGD policies include the technical level of a
country, its data providers and its data users (Wang and Lo, 2016). Kassen (2018) studied
stakeholders of OGD including government agents, citizens, independent developers and
non-governmental organisations, which are evaluated in this work. Furthermore, the
government agents are separated into executives, government ministers, the general public
and the promotion ministry (Attard et al.,2015;Harrison and Sayogo, 2014;Wang and Lo,
2016). The non-governmentalorganisations include citizens, as well as commercial and non-
commercial agencies.
Angles are divided from the viewpointof stakeholder relationships of OGD, as shown in
Figure 1, because OGD involves the government and data. From the perspective of the
government, government ministers, the general public and the promotion ministry are the
major objects of related studies (Attard et al.,2015;Harrison and Sayogo, 2014;Wang and
Lo, 2016). Government ministriesprovide agency groups and individual services. The major
objectives for promotingOGD are as follows:
to provide citizens with administrative transparency, public participation,
government oversight and decision support;
to enhance economic and social values; and
to facilitate cross-sectoral cooperation and policy-making. High-level executives
support and promote open data activities to improve the performance of the
government and enhance economic development.
From a data perspective, data availability is the primary factor in achieving OGD goals
(Vetrò et al., 2016). The basic requirements are that data exist in digital form and are
available online, availableto the public and timely as well as up-to-date. Subsequently, any
licences and copyright are required to allow users to access required data free of charge
EL
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