Studying complex systems through design interventions Probing open government data ecosystems in the Netherlands

Abstract

Recently, we have seen a rising interest in the study of complex systems in public administration. This paper demonstrates how specific design interventions, also referred to as 'probes', can be used to investigate complex systems. The value of this strategy is demonstrated by probing three open data ecosystems in the Netherlands. The probes produce a new understanding of the interrelations between underlying patterns and dynamics of open government data practices. Our research shows that probing is a promising research strategy that can produce rigorous academic knowledge on the underlying patterns and dynamics of complex systems in public administration.

User involvement and value co-creation in well-being ecosystems

“…At the same time, the ecosystem approach puts enough emphasis on the user's lifeworld to reveal gaps in the social systems from the user's perspective and does not solely focus on collaborations between organisations, which is a common weakness in many interorganisational network models (Kinder et al, 2022;Poblete et al, 2022;Provan and Kenis, 2008;Ruijer et al, 2023). As our findings show, the user's experiences at the centre of collaboration can be a fruitful strategy to address value creation among a multiplicity of actors in the well-being ecosystem.…”

“…However, the dominant, limited focus of analysis has been on isolated, existing services as well as the user-provider dyad; this has generated little knowledge about how value between multi-actors (individuals and organisations) in ecosystems is co-created. Thus, an ecosystem approach (Poblete et al, 2022;Kinder et al, 2022;Ruijer et al, 2023;Osborne et al, 2021;Petrescu, 2019) with a multiplicity of actors is necessary to produce innovative solutions that can tackle contemporary societal challenges, including healthcare, health and well-being in general.…”

An emergent mechanism of inclusive e-Government design: The interplay of user design input and provider response

“…To uncover how inclusive e-Government design emerges in practice, we devised an approach through which we captured users' evaluations of existing e-Government services and their rich interactions with the providers of these services. Our method can be characterized as observation-centered (Baptista et al, 2017;Mullarkey & Hevner, 2019) and as probing (Ruijer et al, 2021). Capturing observations and probing perspectives enabled us to analyze the potential evolution of e-Government service design and, more specifically, to identify possible system improvements as objects of inclusive e-Government design practices.…”

“…Second, most prior scholarly works on open e-Government have focused on uncovering mechanisms of transparent data access as a key dimension of openness (Ruijer et al, 2020a(Ruijer et al, , 2020bRuijer et al, 2021;Ruijer, 2021). For example, Ruijer and colleagues have highlighted the critical roles of "strategic opaqueness" (Ruijer et al, 2020a), data ecosystems (Ruijer et al, 2021), and inter-organizational data governance (Ruijer, 2021) in influencing the enhanced transparent access dimensions of openness. Prior research, however, has rarely focused on untangling the mechanism for inclusion dimension of open e-Government.…”

“…Ruijer (2021) focuses on collaborations that produce open government data in their efforts to tackle and successfully harness issues of inter-organizational governance vis-à-vis data sharing. Ruijer et al (2021) apply design science and action research approaches to develop a framework for complex public sector interventions that rely on the notion of "probing" for developing and assessing open government data initiatives. In particular, the focus of Ruijer et al (2020b) on "open government data work" as the practices on the ground that evolve and become social-material constellations is particularly interesting in the context of open government.…”