Over the last decade, open data policies have been urging governments to open their data more and more. However governmental organizations have been constantly struggling and are slow to open their administrative data to the public due to barriers, such as: opening up of data is thought up much later in the process and not when the data is being created; they have limited knowledge or support to open data; and scarce awareness among employees about the potential of open data. Organizations also miss out on realizing potential benefits of opening up data such as: the increased quality and efficiency of the public services; new business models are created which benefits the economy; transparency and accountability is improved in public services; and there will be an increase in collaboration, participation and social innovation.
In this research we focus on archival institutions who want to open up their administrative data to the public, when traversing through the extensive literature of open data, we found that there was barely any literature providing guiding principles for archival institutions on how to open up their administrative data to the public. These principles are important as they can be seen as a support system to archival institutions who are just starting to open their administrative data to the public. Secondly, the existing literature does not focus on the barriers at archival institutions for opening up administrative data to the public.
Action design research (ADR) is used as the overarching research approach, where four main stages can be differentiated as: 1) problem formulation stage; 2) building, intervention and evaluation stage; 3) reflection and learning stage; and 4) formulation of learning stage.
The objective of this study is to design principles for opening up administrative data by an archival institution to the public. Design principles are defined as directive and normative guidelines envisioned to guide all the stakeholders to design and evaluate frameworks. We assumed that this would guide the employees of archival institutions in opening up their administrative data to the public.
In the problem formulation stage of this study, we answered the first research question, namely: “What are the barriers curtailing governmental organizations from opening their administrative data to the public?” A comprehensive list of barriers was derived from a literature review. In the building, intervention and evaluation stage, we answered the second research question - “To which extent do these barriers block opening of data for archival institutions?” using the case study approach, this comprehensive list is narrowed down based on importance and relevance for single organization that
is the Dutch National Archives. The limelight is on those barriers which are related to opening of data. Four different categories of barriers were recognized through literature such as institutional, technical, legislative, and task complexity, the barriers are: At the National Archives there is a lack of appropriate support for data creation which can be readily opened; Creation of open data requires trust and participation from both the data publisher and the users; At National Archives it is uncertain how data will be reused in the future outside the organization; In National Archives there is emphasis on barriers and opportunities are neglected; There is limited awareness among employees of the needs of open data users; No tool support for opening up data at the National Archives; There is an emphasis on privacy violations caused by opening data at the National Archives; There is an emphasis on security risks of opening data at the National Archives; It is difficult for employees in the National Archives to search for data; and there is no helpdesk support for open data challenges internal to the National Archives.
The third research question “What design principles can be developed for opening up archival administrative data?” in building, intervention and evaluation stage is answered and the design principles are formulated for opening up administrative data to the public by means of output from literature review and case study analysis. The barriers are used as basis to formulate the design principles, additionally requirements like usability, comprehensibility, flexibility and effectiveness were embedded into the principles. Ten design principles were formulated.
After the formulation of the principles for opening up administrative data, the next step was to evaluate them. In the fourth and final question - “To which extent do the developed design principles make opening of archival administrative data easier?” was answered. We chose the combination of ex-ante and naturalistic type of evaluation where we used the questionnaire and observation approach to evaluate the principles. The evaluation was done at the National Archives and the results show that the proposed design principles indeed make it easier for opening up administrative data to the public. Furthermore, from the feedback given in the evaluation, the ten design principles were modified and shortened to 7 final design principles, namely: Create and maintain a helpdesk for open data related issues, such as creation and opening of data; Provide knowledge to employees through hands-on and classroom trainings on open data; Check for privacy violations – Automation of tools to check for privacy violations; Check for security risks before publishing; Collect metadata simultaneously with the data when the data is created; Evaluate the existing tool for opening up data and then modify/create new tool; and Host hackathons/events to foster co-creation.
This study contributes to literature by enumerating an exhaustive list of barriers concerning the opening of data by archival institutions, by formulating and evaluating design principles for opening administrative data, and by contributing to ADR as a design science approach. Additionally, as practical contributions, the thesis is instrumental in firstly listing the barriers for open data at the National Archives, secondly from the aforementioned barriers, the design principles will recommend the steps for National Archives to take for opening their administrative data. Thirdly, the proposed design principles can be used by archival institutions, confirmed by the evaluation results. Lastly, the implementation of the proposed design principles is assumed to lead to opening up more administrative data by archival institutions and this may lead to the envision benefits of increasing transparency, and accountability.