Criteria for the identification of ineffective open data portals: pretender open data portals

Abstract

Open data are considered an essential resource for governments, businesses, and citizens. In that context, open data portals have potential for creating enormous economic growth. Open data portals should allow the reuse of open data, ensure the efficiency of data transmission, and enable professional initiatives based on data reuse. However, there are portals that are inefficient because they do not allow reuse of their data. The objective of this work is to define and identify open data portals that do not offer the possibility for professional reuse of their data. We refer to them as “pretender open data portals”. The following research questions are considered herein: What minimum criteria must an open data portal satisfy to enable professional reuse of open data? How can portals that do not meet these criteria be identified? And, what problems might these portals present, and how they might be solved? The results of an analysis of two samples of open data portals in Spain reveal that 63.8% and 56.1% of the portals analyzed in 2019 and 2021, respectively, can be considered pretender open data portals. The existence of pretender open data portals can have negative economic and social impacts, such as wasting public resources and projecting a negative image of the government’s open data policies. To find coordination mechanisms to develop open data portals that, through the professional re-use of their data can create economic and social value, is one important challenge. The analysis of best practices of open data portals can be also a way to go in deep in the understanding of open data reuse impact not only from a professional standpoint.

Open Government in Spain: An Introspective Analysis

“…These open government data have experienced great growth in recent years due to the benefits derived from the promotion of transparency (Wang et al 2022) being a fundamental part of open government policies (Díez-Garrido and Melero-Lázaro 2022). Spain could be considered a leader in open data, with more than 300 open data portals across different institutions and levels of government (Abella et al 2022).…”

Open data-set identifier for open innovation and knowledge management

“…The first topic has been developed by Abella et al (2022a), who analyse open data portals that are inefficient, which are called “pretender open data portals” (PODP). They are portals that are not suitable for the professional reuse of their data.…”

“…In addition to its functionalities and advantages, OpenDatId makes easier the identification of data-sets that are published in pretender open data portals where no API is available. Abella et al (2022a) explain that these portals, PODP, are inefficient and waste resources, so incentives should be sought so that new portals of this type are not developed and/or those that exist are improved. If a unique identification system for open data-sets is established, the use of APIs will be more likely to become widespread, as they would be necessary to have an OpenDatId.…”

“…Open data serves as a basis for entrepreneurs to generate new business models designed to generate new digital services through the reuse of open data (Lindman, 2014). However, some authors point out the problems of reusing open data published through open data portals (Abella et al , 2022a). One such problem is the publication of data-sets in different formats and under different names.…”

Overcoming the Barriers of Using Linked Open Data in Smart City Applications

“…• Limited interest from companies: Most OD are offered by public entities, and the lack of interest of private companies to share their data limits the diversity and quantity of available data [51]. Some authors refer to Apparent ODPs as those ODPs that exhibit some of these issues [53]. Table II The statistical indices about the cause of fires published by the Government Open Data Portal Moldova only offer the OD in PDF format c .…”