scholarly journals Civil Society and the Open Data Movement

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Church
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Nongovernmental Organization ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
Library Users ◽  
Open Data Movement

The GODORT International Documents Task Force held a pre-conference at the 2013 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago titled “International Statistics: Helping Library Users Understand the Global Community,”1 with which I was only marginally involved. But I was asked by the committee if it was worth presenting on Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) data, to which I replied it was not: most civil society organizations were not yet in the business of repurposing publicly available data or publishing their own.

scholarly journals The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Davies ◽  
Stephen B. Walker ◽  
Mor Rubinstein ◽  
Fernando Luis Perini
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Open Data ◽  
The State ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
Open Data Movement ◽  
New Phase ◽  
Real World Problems

Its been ten years since open data first broke onto the global stage. Over the past decade, thousands of programmes and projects around the world have worked to open data and use it to address a myriad of social and economic challenges. Meanwhile, issues related to data rights and privacy have moved to the centre of public and political discourse. As the open data movement enters a new phase in its evolution, shifting to target real-world problems and embed open data thinking into other existing or emerging communities of practice, big questions still remain. How will open data initiatives respond to new concerns about privacy, inclusion, and artificial intelligence? And what can we learn from the last decade in order to deliver impact where it is most needed? The State of Open Data brings together over 60 authors from around the world to address these questions and to take stock of the real progress made to date across sectors and around the world, uncovering the issues that will shape the future of open data in the years to come.

Armchair Auditors: Crowdsourcing Analysis of Government Expenditures

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel E. O'Leary
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Information And Communications Technology ◽  
Government Expenditures ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Open Data Movement

ABSTRACT Increasingly, there is interest in using information and communications technology (ICT) to help build a “better world.” As an example, the United Kingdom has initiated an “open data” movement to disclose financial information about federal and local governments and other organizations. This has led to the use of a wide range of technologies (Internet, Databases, Web 2.0, etc.) to facilitate disclosure. However, since there is a huge cost of generating and maintaining open data, there also is a concern: “will anyone do anything with the data?” In a speech in 2009, David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, used the term “armchair auditor” to describe crowdsourcing analysis of that data. In that speech, Cameron (2009) noted: “Just imagine the effect that an army of armchair auditors is going to have on those expense claims.” Accordingly, as more and more countries and organizations generate open data, those “armchair auditors” could play an increasingly important role: to help crowdsource monitoring of government expenditures. This paper investigates a number of potential benefits and a number of emerging concerns associated with armchair auditors.

Corpus Phonetics

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Y. Liberman
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
Limited Access ◽  
Speech Patterns ◽  
Open Data Movement

Semiautomatic analysis of digital speech collections is transforming the science of phonetics. Convenient search and analysis of large published bodies of recordings, transcripts, metadata, and annotations—up to three or four orders of magnitude larger than a few decades ago—have created a trend towards “corpus phonetics,” whose benefits include greatly increased researcher productivity, better coverage of variation in speech patterns, and crucial support for reproducibility. The results of this work include insights into theoretical questions at all levels of linguistic analysis, along with applications in fields as diverse as psychology, medicine, and poetics, as well as within phonetics itself. Remaining challenges include still-limited access to the necessary skills and a lack of consistent standards. These changes coincide with the broader Open Data movement, but future solutions will also need to include more constrained forms of publication motivated by valid concerns for privacy, confidentiality, and intellectual property.

scholarly journals The Challenges of Open Data Movement for Education: What is the Say of Young Employees and Students in Croatia?

2021 ◽  
pp. 374-383
Author(s):  
Branka Mraović
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Technical Knowledge ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
Data Policy ◽  
Data Portal ◽  
Open Data Movement ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Shed Light

This paper aims to shed light on how students and young employees in Croatia assess their education for open data and what is their opinion on the compliance of the central Open Data Portal with the needs of young people as well as how they evaluate open data policy related to the young people in Croatia. This research highlights the lack of technical knowledge as a serious obstacle to the productive use of open data. As many as 56% of respondents from companies that have undergone digital transformation believe that they do not have enough knowledge to participate in open data projects, and the same scepticism is expressed by 59.6% of non-technical respondents and 45.7% of students. The data presented in this paper is part of a broader empirical research on the impact of digitalization on the transformation of the Croatian economy, carried out by the author in late 2018 on a sample of 51 young employees from 10 companies in the city of Zagreb and 70 students from 16 technical and non-technical Faculties of Zagreb University.

Open data movement in Greece

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charalampos Alexopoulos ◽  
Lefkothea Spiliotopoulou ◽  
Yannis Charalabidis
Keyword(s):  
Open Data ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
Open Data Movement

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TEXTS IN CONTEXT. TOWARDS A CONCEPTUAL DATA MODEL (THE THOT DATA MODEL - TDM)

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-41
Author(s):  
STÉPHANE POLIS ◽  
VINCENT RAZANAJAO
Keyword(s):  
Data Model ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Linked Open Data ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Online Implementation ◽  
Conceptual Data ◽  
Open Data Movement

Abstract In this paper, we propose a conceptual data model which could be the basis for future implementations of databases and digital corpuses of Ancient Egyptian texts that fully integrate the material dimensions of writing. The types of metadata that can be used for documenting the elements and relationships of this model are discussed and the resources (URIs) available for its online implementation (in the perspective of the ‘linked open data’ movement) are examined.

scholarly journals Opening government health data to the public: benefits, challenges, and lessons learned from early innovators

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika G Martin ◽  
Grace M Begany
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Data Quality ◽  
New York State ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Health Data ◽  
Community Empowerment ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Open Data Movement

Objective: Government agencies are rapidly developing web portals to proactively publish “open” data that are searchable, available in nonproprietary formats, and with unlimited use and distribution rights. In this dynamic environment, we aimed to understand the experiences of 2 early leaders in open health data, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the New York State Department of Health. Materials and Methods: Semistructured interviews with 40 practitioners and policymakers elicited value propositions, capabilities required for successful open data programs, and strategies for improving impact and sustainability. Transcripts were analyzed using a grounded theory approach to identify common perspectives and divergent viewpoints. Results: Respondents were optimistic about the value of open data, reporting numerous opportunities to advance the triple aim of lower costs, improved health care quality, and better population health. Benefits to agencies include enhanced data quality and more efficient operations. External benefits include improved health literacy, data-driven changes in health care delivery, consumer engagement, and community empowerment. Key challenges are resources, cultural resistance, navigating legal and regulatory issues, and data quality. Discussion: The open data movement will likely continue, but success requires sustained leadership, resources, organizational cultural change, promotion of data use, and governance. Jurisdictions that are initiating open data programs can incorporate these lessons from early innovators. Conclusions: The open data movement has a bright future but unknown long-term impact. To maintain momentum, important directions for the field include reconsidering legal guidance on protecting health data in the open data era and quantifying the return on investment.

Open data and its peers: understanding promising harbingers from Nordic Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 765-785
Author(s):  
Maxat Kassen
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Societal Implications ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Data Movement

PurposeThe peer-to-peer perspective on open data is an interesting topic to research, taking into account that data-driven innovations and related startups are often developed independently by civic and private stakeholders in a highly collaborative manner and are tentatively beginning to directly compete with traditional e-government solutions, providing arguably better services to citizens and businesses. In this regard, the paper aims to further debate on the potential of such independent data-driven collaboration not only to transform the traditional mechanisms of public sector innovations but also provide more democratic ways to ensure greater transparency of government and its responsibility before the society.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on a cross-country case study, resorting to the content analysis of three demonstrative cases in the development of open data-driven projects, which specifically promote peer-to-peer communication between its stakeholders. In this regard, the case study itself relies heavily on the analysis of rich empirical data that the author collected during his field studies in the Northern European region in 2015–2017, particularly in Estonia, Finland and Sweden. The practical research itself consists of three major parts, which reflect peer-to-peer perspectives of correspondingly civic, public and private stakeholders through manifested examples of related independent projects in the area.FindingsThe paper's results demonstrate that the use of peer-to-peer mechanisms in advancing related public sector reforms allows to transform the traditional understanding of e-government phenomena in a conceptually new way. E-government or its last more political interpretation – from the perspective of its peers could be regarded not necessarily as a platform to provide digital public services but as a source of raw material for various third party projects in, respectively, civic, government and business peer-to-peer dimensions of such reforms. As a result, open data provides an interesting playground to change the very nature of public sector innovations in the area.Research limitations/implicationsThe choice of countries for research was motivated by purposive and convenience sampling because all these countries are situated in one region, have both similarities and differences in historical, political and socioeconomic backgrounds and, therefore, provide an ideal playground to investigate open data as a context dependable phenomenon. In this regard, the unique political and socioeconomic contexts of these countries provide an interesting playground to debate on the potential of social democracy, egalitarian society and social equality, i.e. public values that are deeply embedded into the fabric of societies there, to benefit the open data movement in a fundamental manner.Practical implicationsThis paper reports on unique practical approaches for peer-to-peer collaboration and cooperation in advancing open data-driven platforms among stakeholders. The results of the case studies in three Nordic countries, which are currently among global leaders in advancing the concept of open government, are presented in an intrinsically illustrative manner, which could help practitioners and policymakers to understand better the potential of such a peer-to-peer perspective on open data. In this regard, the models proposed, of citizen-to-citizen, business-to-business, government-to-government interactions, could be interesting to a wide audience of e-government stakeholders in many nations.Social implicationsThe paper also enters into philosophical debates about societal implications of digital peer-to-peer data-driven communication among people. Recent efforts to digitize almost every part of social life, starting from popularization of solutions for distant work and ending to online access to various public services, incentivize individual members of civil society to communicate in an inherently peer-to-peer way. This fact will definitely increase the demand for related digital services. Social distancing in a digital context will allow to paradoxically emancipate technically savvy and entrepreneurial people in creating new services, including using open data, which could meet the demand.Originality/valueThe research is intrinsically of an empirical character because recent e-government reforms in the public sector in many countries, including in the open data area, provide rich practical knowledge to test the limits of new technologies to advance society in socioeconomic and, more importantly, political development. In this regard, this paper provides the first research in analyzing open data from a unique peer-to-peer perspective with an ultimate goal of the whole investigation to draw the attention of other e-government scholars and initiate debates on the collaborative nature of the phenomena to empower civil society and ensure transparency of government.

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