The maturity of open government data maturity: a multivocal literature review
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-11-2021-0354 |
| Published date | 12 April 2022 |
| Date | 12 April 2022 |
| Pages | 1007-1030 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
| Author | Murat Tahir Çaldağ,Ebru Gökalp |
The maturity of open government
data maturity: a multivocal
literature review
Murat Tahir Çalda
g
Department of Technology and Knowledge Management, Baskent University,
Ankara, Turkey, and
Ebru G€
okalp
Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Hacettepe University,
Ankara, Turkey and
Department of Engineering, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Abstract
Purpose –The aim of this study is to provide administrators in government institutions a roadmap to achieve
benefits of open government data (OGD) by reviewing and classifying studies with assessment or maturity
models (MMs) in the OGD domain with a Multivocal Literature Review (MLR).
Design/methodology/approach –To achieve this goal, the authors conducted an MLR that includes data
from not only the formal literature but also the grey literature (e.g. white papers and online documents).
Findings –Out of 3,569 sources,81 studies were selected by followingthe elimination scheme and assessing
sources by relevanceand methodology. As a result of the quality assessment of the identifiedMMs based on
predefined criteria, unambiguity, comparability, repeatability, completeness, clearness and objectivity, it was
observedthat there are a limitednumber of MMs in this domain and none of themfully satisfies the requirements.
Originality/value –This study is likely the first MLR on OGD domain. This MLR serves as a first step for
future research on OGD assessment and MMs by presenting the need to establish a holistic approachcovering
all OGD dimensions, creation of an objective assessment method, prescriptive properties, and empirical
evaluation demonstrating the applicability and usefulness at different scope levels.
Keywords Open data, Open government data, Multivocal Literature Review, Maturity model, Maturity
assessment
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Open Government Data (OGD) as a concept became a popular research domain after the
Open Government Directive issued by the United States in 2009 (White House, 2009),
followed by other countries. OGD can be defined as available, usable, reusable,
redistributable and free of charge government data (Attard et al., 2015;Caldag et al.,
2019;Okamoto, 2017). The economic and social value generated by OGD became a focus of
interest to the public sector and entrepreneurs. The return on investment of OGD initiatives
in the European Union was approximately 52 billion euros in 2018 (Open Government
Partnership, 2019). It also provides new job opportunities; for example, the reuse of OGD
provided 75,000 new jobs for employment opportunities in 2016 (Open Government
Partnership, 2019). The observed benefits of utilizing OGD are improving operational
capacity, overcoming asymmetry of information, efficiency and cost reduction, reducing
the red tape on bureaucracy, improving democracy, providing innovative practices, and
producing value and benefits, like transparency, participation, collaboration, trust and
legitimacy (Altayar, 2018;Çalda
get al., 2019;Caldag et al., 2019;Hansson et al., 2015;
Kassen, 2020;Matheus and Janssen, 2020;Schmidthuber et al., 2019). Apart from these
provided socio-economic benefits, OGD improves civil rights, prevents corruption and
The maturity
of open
government
data maturity
1007
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2050-3806.htm
Received 30 November 2021
Revised 20 February 2022
Accepted 19 March 2022
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 74 No. 6, 2022
pp. 1007-1030
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-11-2021-0354
provides quality improvements in public services (Lucas Amin, 2017;OECD, 2011;Open
Government Partnership, 2019).
Althoughthe benefits of OGD seem intangibleand hard to measure, public administrations
report that OGDprovides a reduction in administrative efforts, automation and simplification
of administrativeprocedures, more accessiblecommunication with the public,improvement in
public image andpublic procurement, as well as increasingin the active citizens’participation
(Matheus and Janssen, 2020;Ruijer et al.,2020). As a result of observing these benefits, OGD
implementationand usage in the public administration domain is gettingmore attention from
both academia andpublic institutions (Kassen, 2018). While OGD has a significant impact on
todays’governments, businessesand societies, the number of organizationsready to take full
advantage of it is limited (M
achov
aet al.,2018). Organizations are trying to utilize OGD face
barriers, such as copyright and data management problems, organizational culture, legal
mandates, resistance to change, lack of financial resources, support from top management,
expert staff, technological infrastructure and social awareness of societies on the subject
(Cahlikova and Mabillard, 2020;M
achov
aet al., 2018;Ruijer and Meijer, 2020;Sandoval-
Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2016;Ubaldi,2013;Yang et al.,2015;Zhu, 2020). These barrierscause
the inability to achieve democratic accountability, public participation and information
transmission (Chadwick, 2011;M
achov
aet al.,2018;Reddick and Ganapati, 2011;Worthy,
2015).Although most organizationsare aware of the potentialeffects of OGD, many do not have
a clear path to bridgethe gaps to utilize OGD.
Structural approaches, such as assessment models or maturity models (MMs),
frameworks, are developed to assist organizations by providing extensive guidance and a
roadmap for improvement. They are considered essential guiding instruments in many
domains, such as software development, information technology management,
e-government, business process management and knowledge management (Oliveira and
Pedron, 2014;R€
oglinger et al., 2012;Tarhan et al., 2016;Wendler, 2012). An MM consists of a
sequence of maturity levels for objects representing the anticipated or desired progress path
as discrete stages (Becker et al., 2009). The expected benefits of MMs include increased return
on investment, quality, performance, customer satisfaction, staff involvement and decreased
errors (Khoshgoftar and Osman, 2009). They also provide benchmarking for an organization
to compare its processes to industry practices (Doodds and Newman, 2015).
There is a growing need for assessment and benchmarking studies of problematic
business practices in governmental processes (Carrasco and Sobrepere, 2015;Dobrzykowski
et al., 2012). Although there are substantial numbers and broadened scales of available MMs
in other domains, assessment and MMs developed for the OGD domain have not yet been
extensively investigated. However, as indicated in the previous literature (Kalampokis et al.,
2011;Silva and Pinheiro, 2018), a structured and standardized model for OGD will provide an
accurate and repeatable roadmap. Therefore, there is a need to review the literature to obtain
an overall understanding of the existence, characteristics and use of MMs in the OGD
discipline for being able to choose the most suitable assessment or MM or develop a new MM
with different capabilities.
Multivocal literature review (MLR) is a systematic review evaluating and interpreting
scientific literature and grey literature studies relevant to the research topic. The multivocal
meaning comes from the diverse set of authors as voices, including academics, practitioners,
journalists and policy centers. MLR studies have benefits as including different perspectives
and views for further analysis (Ogawa and Malen, 1991). As stated in the literature, grey
literature knowledge should be incorporated into any research on accurate representation,
especially in practitioner-oriented fields (Garousi et al., 2017). MLR studies provide a holistic
perspective, identifying gaps and future research subjects.
This study aims to review the existing literature on assessment and MMs developed in the
OGD domain, assess the MMs’principles, find the research gaps in the literature and provide
AJIM
74,6
1008
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