Methodologies for publishing linked open government data on the Web: A systematic mapping and a unified process model

Abstract

Since the beginning of the release of open data by many countries, different methodologies for publishing linked data have been proposed. However, they seem not to be adopted by early studies exploring linked data for different reasons. In this work, we conducted a systematic mapping in the literature to synthesize the different approaches around the following topics: common steps, associated tools and practices, quality assessment validations, and evaluation of the methodology. The findings show a core set of activities, based on the linked data principles, but with additional critical steps for practical use in scale. Furthermore, although a fair amount of quality issues are reported in the literature, very few of these methodologies embed validation steps in their process. We describe an integrated overview of the different activities and how they can be executed with appropriate tools. We also present research challenges that need to be addressed in future works in this area.

Linked Open Government Data: Still a Viable Option for Sharing and Integrating Public Data?

“…However, despite the initially promising expectations, our recent research activities on OGD and LD, involving the analysis of various government portals in different capacities [18,25,46], have occasionally identified what seems to be a significant decline in interest in LOGD. This impression is corroborated by Penteado et al [33], who recently observed, "Although the open government data movement is still producing large amounts of data worldwide, linked data still represents a tiny portion". Attard et al also noted "Yet, the use of Linked Data in open government initiatives is still quite low" [34].…”

“…", it is important to recognize the concerns raised by several scholars about the suboptimal adoption of LD and LOD dissemination practices in the government sector, often centered around the limited use of RDF distributions [57][58][59][60]. Despite these concerns, there is a notable scarcity of studies that provide a quantitative analysis of these issues in specific contexts or scenarios [33,[61][62][63]. Among these, Ibanez et al [62], in their analysis of a diverse sample of regional and local European institutional websites, observed that RDF is not widely used.…”

“…This study yielded percentages of RDF distributions that were similar to the findings in our own research. Penteado et al [33], drawing on various studies of national portals from countries like the US, Brazil, Italy, Colombia, and Greece, also highlight the extremely limited proliferation of RDF datasets. In their analysis of LOD challenges and opportunities for data-driven government initiatives in Russia, Aitkin et al [63], as of May 2020, noted that the Russian Open Data Portal showed minimal growth in open data, with only 23,775 datasets.…”

“…To address these challenges and promote the reuse of OGD, several authors have suggested applying Linked Data (LD) principles to OGD [2,[29][30][31][32]. Linked Open Government datasets offer the potential to "replace isolated data silos with larger, interconnected datasets built on top of the Web architecture" [33,34], fostering synergy among disparate data sources [35]. This approach allows users to gain a better understanding of the data's context by exploring related datasets [36,37].…”

Doc2KG

“…At the same time, other methods focused on how to publish a DMS as linked data and making it interoperable. Towards having high-quality data, Penteado et al (2021) Similarly, Bratsas et al (2021) defined an RDF vocabulary to convert data from a relational database into a knowledge graph. Then, they used this knowledge graph for facilitating ETL (Extract Transform Load) processes and trained a clustering model for identifying red flags in fiscal projects.…”