The Development of Open Government Data: Connecting Supply and Demand Through Portals

Open government data (OGD) has developed rapidly in recent years due to various benefits that can be derived through transparency and public access. However, researchers emphasize a lack of use instead of lack of disclosure as a key problem in OGD’s present development. Previous studies have approached this issue either from the supply-side, focusing on data quantity and quality, or from the demand-side, focusing on factors that affect users’ acceptance of OGD, but seldom consider both sides at the same time. This unique study compares the supply and demand sides of OGD and explores possible directions for the future development of OGD portals based on the discovered mismatches between the two.

The authors improve OGD utilization by balancing the supply-side and demand-side according to citizens’ demands through OGD portals. Based on the concept of an OGD ecosystem, four connected studies are explored. The first study built an evaluation framework for understanding the development of the OGD supply-side. The second study focuses on a survey conducted to analyze the awareness and utilization of OGD portals by citizens, who are the primary users and major beneficiaries of OGD on the demand-side. A third study compares the supply and demand sides based on Diffusion of Innovation theory. A final study tests the proposed usability criteria for building an OGD portal by carrying out a between-subjects experiment including a virtual agent. Each case study examines a unique aspect of OGD in China, and also offers reflections on future directions for developing OGD.

Providing a unique and enhanced theoretical and practical understanding of OGD and its usage, as well as proposing directions for OGD portals’ future development in order to encourage citizens’ OGD utilization, this is a must-read for researchers and policymakers examining the impact and possibilities of OGD.

Di Wang is a Postdoc researcher from the School of Information Management, Wuhan University. She received her PhD. of Computing from Macquarie University and PhD. of Information Resources Management from Wuhan University. Her research interests include big data analytics, open data policy, open data resources, and data services. She published in journals including Government Information Quarterly, Library Hi Tech and conferences including JCDL, ICADL, iConference, etc. She has been awarded several research grants from the National Science Foundation of China, the National Social Science Foundation of China and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.

Deborah Richards is a Professor in the School of Computing at Macquarie University. Following 20 years in the IT industry during which she completed a BBus (Comp and MIS) and MAppSc (InfoStudies), she completed a PhD in artificial intelligence on the reuse of knowledge at the University of New South Wales and joined academia in 1999. While she continues to work on solutions to assist decision-making and knowledge acquisition, for the past decade, her focus has been on intelligent systems, agent technologies and virtual worlds to support human learning, health and well-being. She has over 300 refereed publications and been awarded numerous research and teaching grants from the Australian Research Council and other research funders.

Ayse Aysin Bilgin is an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Macquarie University, Australia. Her research in health developed to include adolescent health and recently studies related to breast cancer, MS and Alzheimer’s disease. She is one of the pioneers on applying machine learning to health data sets. She was awarded “Excellence in research: Five Future-shaping Priorities (Healthy People)” by Macquarie University. Ayse has won several learning and teaching awards for her outstanding contributions to student learning such as ALTC citation for ‘Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning’. Her pedagogical research interests are focused on statistics education, such as learning approaches in statistics, impact of learning spaces to students’ learning. She is the President of International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) (July 2021 – July 2023).

Chuanfu Chen is a Professor in the School of Information Management, and dean of the Graduate School, Wuhan University. From 2005 to 2012, he was dean of the School of Information Management of Wuhan University and was the deputy president of Library Society of China from 2004 to 2012. He earned his MLS in 1986, and his PhD in law in 2001, both from Wuhan University. His research focuses on library development, public access to information resources, big data governance and copyright. He has published in many journals including ASLIB Proceedings, College & Research Libraries, Electronic Library, Journal of Library Science of China, and Scientometrics, among others. He has also been awarded numerous research grants from the National Social Science Foundation and the Natural Science Foundation of China.