Civic Hackers User Experiences and Expectations of Seattles Open Municipal Data Program

Abstract

Abstract

Who Do You Think We Are? The Data Publics in Digital Government Policy

“…From either perspective, openness is a perspective of sharing outwards from an internal place. Organizations [4] [18] or groups [21] [38] release open data for distribution to people outside the originating entity.…”

“…For instance internal syntactic publics might understand the idiosyncrasies of the production of data assets but also have expertise as employees [31]. External syntactic publics may gain semantic knowledge by participating in civic hack-athons [38]. Future research might design an experimental study to investigate the tensions between individuals/organizations, internal/external, or semantic/syntactic.…”

“…In fact research has shown the opposite. Open data programs may impede reuse [35] [38] or create a barrier for wide participation [5].…”

The Making of a 'Top' Open Data City: A Case Study of Edmonton’s Open Data Initiative

“…However, the path to open data benefits is not a one-way street and, like other socialbenefit innovations, requires collaboration [11] from a plurality of actors [22]. The fact that individual citizens (and cities) may not have the skills or knowledge to fully exploit open data [6,23], suggests intermediaries, such as application developers and researchers, are needed to take full advantage of open data [10,11].…”

“…In truth, governments face many technical and organizational challenges to implementing and optimizing their open data programs [8,9]. Moreover, open data success increasingly requires a collaborative effort between governments and their diverse stakeholders and intermediaries [10,11].…”