The adoption of open data policy-making by governments is limited due to different types of constraints. Civil servants are reluctant to open their data to the public for many reasons. The lack of knowledge of benefits that can be produced by the release of data and the overestimation of risks and operational complexity seems to decrease their willingness to support the opening of data. The idea that a serious game intervention can change awareness of participants in different domains is already known. Yet, games are domain dependent and concepts differ per domain. A game has never been used for the emerging domain of open data in which civil servants are operating in a bureaucratic environment having a risk-averse culture and strict institutional rules. A role-playing game prototype was designed for civil servants to experience open data policy-making. This paper analyses its first results aiming at changes of perception for the participants of the game and aims to understand the changes in behavior of civil servants that played it. For some participants, the game influenced their attitude, whereas others were not influenced. Suggesting that different approaches might be necessary for changing the attitude of different groups.

The actual opening of government data is done by civil servants operating within their institutional environment. As such, the institutional environment and their behavior towards the opening of data is key to increase the quality and quantity of open data. However, few studies have analyzed the behavior of government professionals towards open data policy. The objective of this paper is to review the existing literature to find the factors that influences civil servants behaviors towards open data. To identify the drivers and barriers, a literature review was performed listing the most cited papers with "open government data" and "barriers" focusing specific at the behavioral related factors. Even with the increasing of research on the topic of open data, still most of the papers focus on user drivers and barriers rather than on provider challenges. Even less studies focus on the civil servants' individual level of factors influencing their support to the release of governmental data. Most barriers found in the literature are related to infrastructural or technical issues. Whereas some individual level behavioral barriers could be found, including culture, lack of individual incentives and misunderstanding the impact of opening data, broader discussions on social norms, lack of education and experience are still missing in the literature. This paper contributes to the need for deeper understanding of the behavioral factors that influences the civil servants to support the opening of data.

Open data policies are increasingly being adopted by governments. However, civil servants find it challenging to comply with open data policies. Gaming can help civil servants to practise opening data and can change their behaviour to support the opening of more data. In this article, the effect of playing a game is evaluated in an experiment in which several factors that influence the opening of data are compared before and after the game. The benefits appeared in unexpected ways and areas. Data management, privacy and security knowledge was transferred using the game, the perception of benefits showed significant changes, and behavioural intention was positively affected. Points for practitioners Civil servants’ behaviour influences how public policies are enacted. The release of open data by governments is related by many as crucial for increasing public transparency and civic participation, and generating new economic opportunities. Games can influence the attitude of civil servants and, consequently, change governments’ decisions. Transferring knowledge and providing insights from new experiences can influence civil servants’ attitudes to open data. Moreover, governments can use games to influence civil servants’ attitudes.

The recent need for social-distancing caused by COVID-19 resulted in working remotely, which can cause loneliness and disconnect from the organization. The pandemic stimulated people to look for novel ways to interact and, at the same time, socialize with each other. The change to home office increased the number of people using digital video calls; however, these impose restrictions on social bonding. In this commentary, we argue that the social bonding capacity of video calls can be increased by using games. Playing games can create a common object with shared goals, which can give players the feeling of being in the same environment, belonging to the same organization, working on joint objectives, and give an enjoyable experience. All work activities will unlikely return to the office after the pandemic is over, and preparing for remote working and socialization is needed. We recommend several avenues for research, including researching the concepts of online socialization and evaluating the effectiveness of gaming.

Open government is a trend of public administration that strengthens the relationship between governments and the public. In open government, the opening of data is the mean to make governmental information accessible for citizens, firms, NGO's and other public bodies. However, one of the challenges is still to get national and local governments to open their data for use. There exist already national governmental policies for open data and research has been developed to support policies and to understand its effects. Opening by default requires that politicians and public servants change their behaviour towards the opening of data. The objective of the present research is to present how games can be used to change the behaviour of local government's civil servants towards providing and using open data to improve the public policies with which they work (overcome cultural resistance against opening data). Therefore, the engagement of civil servants in open data usage will be experimented through games with various interactions forms. Evaluation of what works (and what does not work) will be registered to produce new inputs on how to use gaming exercises on public policies in general and for local Open Data Policies specifically.