The impact of the activities of non-profit data intermediaries (NPDIs)

Abstract

The use and value of Open Government Data (OGD) are gaining increasing attention from governments, corporations, and individuals. Governments have developed portals and started initiatives to share, promote and facilitate OGD interactions. The key objectives of the release of OGD by public entities are public responsibility, economic expansion, and operational and technical values. However, the potential of OGD is limited by the ability to reuse public data. Although OGD is becoming more available, the value realisation of OGD is hindered by its limited use. Within the OGD ecosystem, data intermediaries, especially Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs), have been playing a role within the OGD ecosystem, perhaps making OGD more usable for users. We assume that the barriers that are most likely to hinder the potential of OGD are more linked to the barriers to using OGD other than structural or provisioning barriers. Furthermore, the barriers to using OGD might be more influenced by the activities provided by the non-profit data intermediaries (NPDIs). Given the anticipated transformation potential of OGD and the current barriers to reusing OGD, it is necessary to investigate how the existence and activities of the NPDIs affected the barriers to using OGD. This study explores the impact of the NPDIs’ activities, particularly their impact on barriers to OGD use. We introduced the following research question:

How do European non-profit data intermediaries reduce the barriers to using OGD?

Adopting an explorative case study approach, we first identified the barriers to using OGD through the use of a literate review method. We introduced three categories of barriers in which these barriers originated. These categories are OGD portals, OGD datasets and OGD users’ abilities. Furthermore, we conducted a narrative literature review to analyse and identify the roles and activities of the open data intermediates. We identified seven roles that summarise the set of functions of responsibility that open data intermediaries assume and fourteen activities by specifying certain actions or tasks that open data intermediaries fulfil. Based on the literature review, we could not link the activities to the barriers. However, we conceptualised the barriers to using OGD and the activities of the open data intermediaries separately.

Following this, we conducted desk research by analysing NPDIs’ websites, complemented by interviews with the selected NPDIs to analyse their activities and roles in the OGD ecosystem toward reducing the barriers to using OGD. Our findings of the activities of the NPDIs showed that NPDIs have a different scope and objectives, often a social goal, compared to open data intermediaries who might be, for instance, interested in profit. However, the roles and activities of NPDIs, are similar to open data intermediaries in terms of their operations. NPDIs do not necessarily focus on specific roles or activities but rather provide a wide range of services and conduct various activities. This may be driven by the overarching social goal where they try to offer a complete solution that does not lack in some areas. However, some of the activities we identified might be specific to NPDIs, such as promoting the use of OGD, allowing OGD users to disseminate their OGD-driven insights and improving and facilitating the process of using OGD.

We conducted nine semi-structured interviews with individuals from NPDIs and their users to learn how they perceive NPDIs are reducing the barriers to using OGD. Through coding the interview transcripts, we applied a thematic analysis approach to the data obtained from the interview. We have identified six themes that represent how NPDIs reduce the barriers to using OGD. These themes are; building OGD capacity and expertise, improving OGD accessibility quality and usability, empowering OGD users, OGD process optimisation, promoting and advocating OGD-related activities and policies, and facilitating and improving stakeholders’ collaboration and engagement. The findings showed that NPDIs mainly emphasised improving OGD capacity, accessibility, availability, and findability. Then, we conducted a focus group session to triangulate our case study data. Three participants participated in our session, two represented the NPDIs perspective, and one represented the user perspective. We concluded that NPDIs’ activities reduce the barriers to using OGD, such as OGD users’ ability, OGD accessibility, and quality of OGD datasets and portals. However, quantifying their impact or linking their activities to some of the barriers they reduce is challenging due to the multiple impacts of the NPDIs’ activities.

Our study attempted to address the gap in the literature regarding the NPDIs’ impact in reducing the barriers to using OGD. Also, our study provided insight into how NPDIs reduce the barriers to using OGD; we identified their characteristics and strategies, which contribute to setting the groundwork for future research exploring the link between NPDIs activities and barriers to using OGD. Our results underline the value of NPDIs to the OGD ecosystem. Policymakers or key NPDIs persons can leverage the results of this study to capitalise on the identified opportunities, such as trying to make NPDIs efforts more proactive in anticipating the barriers of OGD to contribute to better use of OGD ultimately.