Views on Open Data Business from Software Development Companies

Abstract

The interest towards the concept of open data has increased during the last ten years, as governments and municipalities have decided to open their data repositories. This has led to a new generation of mobile apps, which utilize this data to improve the feature richness and the overall user experience for the customers. In this study, we interviewed representatives of five software organization and discussed their views towards opening data-private and public-and also using the open data in practice. Based on our observations, the companies see very limited scope for the use of open data as a business asset: the main applications seem to gravitate towards function as an additional feature for an existing product, not a source of new innovations or business ventures. The results also illustrate on how little benefit the organizations consider to gain from opening their private data, and what alternatives there are for sharing data in a profitable manner. Additionally, as based on the observations, a strategy classification on the different data sharing methods is formulated and presented.

Strategy for Data: Open it or Hack it?

“…The results were that the companies wanted to get financial benefits from their data, because of the costs of data collection. While there are business models for open data, companies require assurances that they will benefit from their data [12]. From the economical point of view, the biggest issue of open data is the fact, that it is difficult to make money with [30], which is why it is generally avoided [12].…”

“…When data openness is being implemented, the conflicts between data management strategies can cause a division of available resources, making data management processes ineffective [14]. Also, exiting conflicts between organizations [1], [7], or the unclear ownership of data [12] can either make the opening ineffective or prevent the disclosure altogether.…”

“…If the follow-ups require creating some changes in the organization, the changes are incremental and manageable and they do not require large changes in the current state, even though it was seen as a challenge (Process and organizational issues). Another issue is the ownership of data: if the ownership is not clear, for example, the data is owned by a third party, this can make opening data ineffective or even prevent opening of data completely [12]. In hackathons, the ownership of the prototypes and further, the product ownership was seen as a major issue (Ownership), since clear ownership would prevent the prototype from further development, and would not be done.…”

“…In the field of open data, open business data is seen as a valuable source of information that could be used in a combination with government data [16], [28]. However, while the companies see the value of crowdsourcing, they are not thrilled with the aspect of opening their own data [12].…”

“…This result was achieved with a systematic literature review, which analyzed the relevant literature in the field and covered different benefits and drawbacks of opening data to private organizations. Continuing into the topic of openness and open data, our continuance study [12] uncovered cases where the data had been opened by a private organization, but the actual applications of the data proved difficult because of regulations and issues in the data usability. Because of this, the open data activities were considered irrelevant in the business scope.…”