Open Data Intermediaries: Motivations, Barriers and Facilitators to Engagement

Abstract

Open data programs have become increasingly established at national and local levels of government. While the degree of success these programs have had in achieving their objectives remains open to question, one factor that has been identified as important to any success is the role of open data intermediaries, individuals and organizations that help others to make use of open data. In this paper we investigate how people become engaged with open data, what their motivations are, and the barriers and facilitators program participants perceive with regard to using open data effectively. We interview participants from a variety of backgrounds with differing levels of experience and engagement with open data. Participants include students learning how to train others in open data techniques and tools; people who attend open data events and use open data for commercial or social benefit; and representatives from local government, municipal agencies and a civic tech non-profit. We identify pathways to successfully developing and nurturing a community of open data intermediaries, and make five recommendations for organizations planning and managing open data programs.

A Scoping Review on Analysis of the Barriers and Support Factors of Open Data

“…There is a lack of time and resources to acquire the missing skills [61]. There is a lack of background knowledge about Open Data [7,27], and the goals of Open Data use are not understood [5].…”

“…Here, the perspective and awareness toward a data-centric culture have yet to develop and benefits to be recognized [5,10,15] even among experts [36] and executives [11]. There is a further lack of awareness about data privacy and sharing opportunities [23,45].…”

“…This increases the risk of misinterpretation [17,40]. Personal fears of cognitive overload with the processes are formulated [5]. In the field of research, there is also a fear of losing academic recognition by slowing the replacement of knowledge with data sharing [48].…”

“…Furthermore, the existing data quality is perceived as inadequate for further processing [5,10,11,13,23,60,61], especially in the integration of old data [11,31]. Some data are either not machine-readable or only available in paper format [11,13].…”

“…Recent technological advancements have exponentially increased the possibilities for fully automated data collection and analysis, impacting all aspects of human life [3,4]. However, the comprehensive and cross-disciplinary use of Open Data has not yet been fully implemented [5].…”