Promoting the use of open government data: Cases of training and engagement

In the last decade, governments around the world have created open government data (OGD) repositories to make government data more accessible and usable by the public, mostly motivated by values such as improved government transparency, citizen collaboration and participation, and spurring innovation. The basic assumption is that once data are more discoverable, accessible, available in alternative formats, and with licensing schemes that allow free re-use, diverse stakeholders will develop innovative data applications. Despite OGD's potential transformative value, there is limited evidence for such transformation, particularly due to scarce data use, which is partly attributable to the lack of technical skills and user training. To advance the dialogue around methods to increase awareness of OGD, improve users' skills to work with OGD, and encourage data use, the paper compares and contrasts how three training interventions in Spain, Italy, and the United States have sought to increase awareness of OGD, improve users' skills and potentially engage them in their use of OGD. We report three main findings. First, introduction and analysis skills are taught in combination to encourage use of open data. Being aware of OGD and its benefits is insufficient to promote use. Second, OGD training seems to be more effective when complemented with knowledge about context and interactions with government. Finally, embedding the training interventions in the specific contexts and considering the unique characteristics, interests, and expectations of different types of users is critical to success.     

Transparency,participation, and accountability practices in open government: A comparative study

In a comparative national study addressing the fiscal domain, we explored relationships between socio-cultural, political, economic, and government conditions and concepts critical to open government, defined as (a) budget transparency (b) participation in budget processes, and (c) accountability information. We found that democracy, human capital, and budget document disclosures are consistently related to transparency, accountability, and the involvement of the Supreme Audit Authority with the public. E-participation and commitment to the Open Government Partnership are each related to particular measures of transparency and accountability. Gross domestic product was negatively related to particular measures of transparency and accountability. Only democracy was related to public participation in budget discussions with the executive, and that was a minimal effect.     

Information governance,records management,and freedom of information: A study of local government authorities in England

In many democratic states political rhetoric gives weight to increasing public participation in and understanding of the political process; (re)-establishing public trust in government decision making; increasing transparency, openness, and accountability of public authorities; and, ultimately, improving government decision-making on behalf of citizens. Access to the public record and freedom of information (FOI) are mechanisms which help to facilitate the accountability of public authorities. Many jurisdictions have introduced legislation related to these mechanisms, and the UK government is no exception with its enactment of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 2000. University College London (UCL) ran a research project over 12 months in 2008–2009, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. The research project examined what the impact of the UK FOIA had been on records management services in public authorities, especially local government. This article reports on some of the findings of the study. It considers how FOI compliance and records management functions are organized in local government and the role of information governance which is emerging as an umbrella for such functions. It draws some conclusions about the contributions that records management services make to the ability of local authorities to comply with the FOIA and identifies some ways in which user experience may be affected by the management of records.     

Understanding the key factors and configurational paths of the open government data performance: Based on fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

The governments worldwide have attached great importance to open government data (OGD), and many OGD projects have emerged in recent years. However, the performance of OGD greatly differs in various districts and governments. Therefore, the influencing factors of OGD performance should be explored. However, the existing research has not yet established a systematic analytical framework for OGD performance, and the explanation degree of performance differences in OGD implementation is limited. Thus, this study takes technical management capacity, financial resource, organization arrangement, rules and regulations, organization culture, public demand, and inter-government competition as antecedent conditions under the perspective of technology–organization–environment framework and resource-based theory. From the cases of 16 provincial OGD practice in China, we employ fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the influencing mechanism of the interaction and coordination of multiple conditions on OGD performance. Results indicate that OGD performance depends on the integration of the total effect of various factors. Moreover, four configurational paths could be utilized to achieve high OGD performance, namely, organization–balanced path, organization–environment path, balanced path, and organization–technology path. Furthermore, a substitution relationship exists among different conditional variables, which points out the direction and focus of the implementation of OGD for governments with different endowment characteristics. This study enriches the existing studies of OGD implementation and provides references for OGD practice.     

Key factors and generation mechanisms of open government data performance: A mixed methods study in the case of China

Open government data (OGD) has attracted widespread attention and has been widely carried out on a global scale. With further promotion, OGD performance becomes a hot topic and meaningful enough for in-depth exploration. This research focuses on the influential factors and generation mechanisms of OGD performance. Based on the resource-based theory and institutional theory, this paper constructs a model from multiple dimensions of internal resources and external pressures. Subsequently, from the 122 cities in China that have constructed OGD platforms, this study adopts a mixed research methods approach, which combines the regression analysis method and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The regression analysis results show that the organization arrangement, legal and policy, and horizontal pressure have direct positive effects on OGD performance. On this basis, this paper use QCA method to explore the configuration paths for the generation of OGD performance of cities in different geographic regions and at different administrative ranks levels. The QCA results provide different configuration paths to achieve better OGD performance, which verified the conclusions drawn by the regression analysis, also provides alternative paths for governments with different characteristics. This paper enriches the studies on OGD performance and provides more targeted paths together with references for the implementation of OGD.     

The role of policy entrepreneurs in open government data policy innovation diffusion: An analysis of Australian Federal and State Governments

Open government data (OGD) policy differs substantially from the existing Freedom of Information policies. Consequently OGD can be viewed as a policy innovation. Drawing on both innovation diffusion theory and its application to public policy innovation research, we examine Australia's OGD policy diffusion patterns at both the federal and state government levels based on the policy adoption timing and CKAN portal “Organization” and “Category” statistics. We found that state governments that had adopted OGD policies earlier had active policy entrepreneurs (or lead departments/agencies) responsible for the policy innovation diffusion across the different government departments. We also found that their efficacy ranking was relatively high in terms of OGD portal openness when openness is measured by the greater number of datasets proactively and systematically published through their OGD portals. These findings have important implications for the role played by OGD policy entrepreneurs in openly sharing the government-owned datasets with the public.     

Interorganizational collaboration and community building for the preservation of state government digital information: Lessons from NDIIPP state partnership initiative

As a part of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), the Library of Congress (LC), partnering with the Center for Technology in Government (CTG), launched an effort in 2005 to integrate state governmental entities into the national network to preserve born-digital information that is both significant and at risk of loss. The main theme that emerged from the efforts of LC, CTG, and the state and federal digital preservation community was the importance of partnership efforts and collaborative strategies for the preservation of state government digital information. Based on the findings of the initiative, this paper discusses challenges and opportunities regarding interorganizational collaboration and community building for digital preservation of state government information. Following the community of practice framework, it is recommended that a “state government digital information preservation community” be developed to facilitate collaboration across agencies and knowledge professionals in state governments.     

Reconceptualizing measuring,benchmarking for improving interoperability in smart ecosystems: The effect of ubiquitous data and crowdsourcing

There is a fundamental shift in measuring and benchmarking due to the ability to use a large variety of data sources and virtually anybody can be involved. Interoperability is the ability of entities to work together covering aspects ranging from the technical to the organizational level. In smarter government, interoperability becomes increasingly important as relationships are subject to continuous changes and organizations operate within organizational ecosystems. In this paper interoperability measurement, benchmarking and improvement are reconceptualized in the light of the effects of big and open data and crowdsourcing in smarter government. Organizational and technical interoperability is decomposed into measurement constructs. A case study is presented showing the applicability and usefulness of the model. Using data sources inside and outside the organization the level of interoperability was measured and suggestions for improvements were identified by making use of experts and the crowd.     

Leadership and institutional design in collaborative government digitalisation: Evidence from Belgium,Denmark, Estonia,Germany, and the UK

Large-scale government digitalisation projects require collaborative approaches for their successful development and implementation. To shed light on these collaboration dynamics, the interplay between two integral parts of collaborative projects: the project rules, procedures, and structures (collectively known as institutional design) and the leaders managing these projects is studied. In doing so, the paper provides empirically grounded insights into the management of collaborative government digitalisation projects. Taking an institutional perspective, and the strategic-relational approach (SRA), we examine the extent to which institutional design constraints leadership behaviours, and under what conditions leaders begin to adjust and/or challenge these design features adding to the knowledge of managing digitalisation of government. To this end, we present a five-country case study of national digitalisation projects across Europe. Our results show that while clear institutional design features such as established rules, project structures, and standard operating procedures are essential at the initial stages of the projects, leaders' skills in understanding and tailoring these features are critical to handle project-related problems and moving forwards towards implementation. This underscores the importance of examining projects taking an SRA approach and the need to understand leadership behaviour in the context of the structures in which it is embedded.     

Experiments and Experiences in Liaison Activities: Lessons from New Librarians in Integrating Technology,Face-to-Face,and Follow-Up

As is the case in many university libraries, Albertsons Library at Boise State University, has hired many new librarians to replace retiring librarians. These newer librarians, typically with less than 3 years’ academic library experience, are actively engaged in meeting the opportunities and challenges of subject liaison responsibilities using innovative Web-based tools. This article addresses liaison experiences with faculty-directed blogs, personalized faculty research pages, a wiki-based liaison manual, and the use of LibraryThing as a collection development tool. An overview of these efforts confirms that new technologies are only as good as the face-to-face communication and the follow-up that accompany their implementation. Much of the content in this article was presented at the 2007 and 2008 Acquisitions Institute conferences at Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood, Oregon.     

"融、立、破、创"——《科学大众》办刊经验分享

作为2019年成功入选"中国科技期刊卓越行动计划"5种科普期刊之一的《科学大众》,守正创新,与时俱进,将科学普及的道路越走越宽,为一代代青年人提供不竭"精神动力".通过网络资料搜集、实地调查研究和查阅文献等多种方式,积累《科学大众》期刊发展的相关资料,经归纳总结,从"媒体融合发展、精品工程立项、打破传统机制和创新品牌活动"4个方面进行探讨分析,凝练出"融、立、破、创"的具体办刊经验.     

Recognizing the Relationships between Interactivity,Story, and Message: Lessons Learned from the Summative Evaluation of the Human Plus Exhibition

Interactivity, message, and story are critical, interrelated components of most educational exhibition designs. In this article, we introduce an Interactivity Design Framework for guiding exhibition designers’ intentional inclusion of interactivity, story, and message in exhibition components. This framework emerges from selected findings from summative evaluation of the Human Plus exhibition, which took place at the New York Hall of Science in late 2013. The exhibition was designed to generate interest in engineering among pre‐adolescent girls. Recognizing the target group's interest in human relationships and narrative, the exhibition was designed to be engaging and interactive, driven by compelling narratives of how engineering had enhanced the lives of people with disabilities. Exhibits interwove interactivity and story to convey messages related to both engineering itself and how engineering can meet the needs of people with disabilities. Because of this dual focus, the exhibition evaluation revealed important findings about how, and under what conditions, story and interactivity function to convey message: they can work together or compete.     

The validation of (advanced) bibliometric indicators through peer assessments: A comparative study using data from InCites and F1000

The data of F1000 and InCites provide us with the unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between peers’ ratings and bibliometric metrics on a broad and comprehensive data set with high-quality ratings. F1000 is a post-publication peer review system of the biomedical literature. The comparison of metrics with peer evaluation has been widely acknowledged as a way of validating metrics. Based on the seven indicators offered by InCites, we analyzed the validity of raw citation counts (Times Cited, 2nd Generation Citations, and 2nd Generation Citations per Citing Document), normalized indicators (Journal Actual/Expected Citations, Category Actual/Expected Citations, and Percentile in Subject Area), and a journal based indicator (Journal Impact Factor). The data set consists of 125 papers published in 2008 and belonging to the subject category cell biology or immunology. As the results show, Percentile in Subject Area achieves the highest correlation with F1000 ratings; we can assert that for further three other indicators (Times Cited, 2nd Generation Citations, and Category Actual/Expected Citations) the “true” correlation with the ratings reaches at least a medium effect size.     

The role of trust in e-Government effectiveness,operational effectiveness and user satisfaction: Lessons from Saudi Arabia in e-G2B

Electronic government (e-Government) systems are becoming an essential strategic tool in the delivery of e-Government-to-Business services (e-G2B). The purpose of this research is to explore direct and indirect effects of trust in online services on the satisfaction of the e-Government service users and other perceptions such as e-G2B system effectiveness and the operational effectiveness of organizations. Based on a sample of e-G2B service users from Saudi Arabia, our preliminary findings suggest that the effects of trust on user satisfaction are mediated by e-G2B system effectiveness measures (e.g., System Quality, Service Quality, and Information Quality) and by operational effectiveness. In addition, we find that operational effectiveness and information quality are the most important drivers of user satisfaction. In contrast to previous research, our results show a negative relationship between trust in online services and service quality and suggest that this finding may have important implications for theory and practice.