Tailoring open government data portals for lay citizens
A gamification theory approach
Anthony Simonofski (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, University of Namur)
A.M.G. Zuiderwijk-van Eijk (TU Delft - Technology, Policy and Management)
Antoine Clarinval (University of Namur)
Wafa Hammedi (University of Namur)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Government policies focused on Open Government Data (OGD) often aim to stimulate the provision of public, interoperable data towards any user, including lay citizens, through online portals. However, these OGD portals are mostly developed for expert users. This hinders the realization of critical values such as transparency, empowerment, and equality of access. Following a Design Science Research approach, this study aims to examine how gamification can help tailor OGD portals for lay citizens. As a pre-condition to this goal, we identify requirements toward OGD portals through twenty interviews with experts and lay citizens. Compared to expert users, lay citizens expect an OGD portal with a more playful interface, vulgarized content, customized visualizations, and transparency-related datasets in a human-readable format. Second, we develop our research artifact, the OGD portal prototype, implementing fifteen design propositions using gamification theory to address lay citizens’ requirements. Third, the evaluation with ten lay citizens reveals the perceived usefulness of the design propositions. Badges were evaluated as most useful to highlight portal relevance. This study contributes to OGD theory development by identifying lay citizens' requirements towards OGD use. Furthermore, this study is the first to reveal the usefulness of implementing notions from gamification theory into OGD portal design. Finally, practitioners can use our findings to make OGD portals more inclusive and thus contribute to attaining key OGD policy objectives.