A Framework for the Multi-Dimensional Assessment of Interoperability for Open Data Ecosystems Development

Bibliographic Data

ID6149247
AuthorsMohsan Ali (0000-0002-3956-3543, University of the Aegean, corresponding author), Georgios Papageorgiou (0000-0002-0639-398X, University of the Aegean), A Rashid A Aziz (0000-0003-3615-4573, Universidad de Zaragoza), Euripidis Loukis (0000-0002-5932-4128, University of the Aegean), Yannis Charalabidis (0000-0003-3760-5495, University of the Aegean), Charalampos Alexopoulos (0000-0002-6610-0675, University of the Aegean), Francisco J López-Pellicer (0000-0001-6491-7430, Universidad de Zaragoza)
Year2024
Volume29
Issue4
Pages439-466
Publication date2024-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInformation Polity (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1875-8754 • E-ISSN: 1570-1255
PublisherIOS Press (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1177/15701255241297172
OpenAlexW4405477607
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited53

The generation of social and economic value from the vast quantities of data opened by governments has been much lower than the initial expectations. It requires the development and cooperation of ecosystems composed of various public, private, and non-profit actors. For the development of these ecosystems in order to generate social and economic value from open government data (OGD), necessary conditions are, on the one hand, the availability of a critical mass of OGD and, on the other hand, the existence of some level of homogeneity and interoperability among the numerous portals and websites providing them, which enables their combined exploitation that increases the potential for value generation from them. This paper focuses on the latter and develops the Technical, Semantic, Legal, and Organizational (TSLO) Interoperability Framework, a conceptual tool designed to provide a structured multi-dimensional assessment of the interoperability capabilities of OGD infrastructures, based on the ‘European Interoperability Framework’ (EIF) as well as relevant OGD literature. This TSLO framework has been applied for the assessment of the above main dimensions of the interoperability of the OGD infrastructures of the Greek local government administration institutions of all three layers (decentralized, regional, and municipal). After this application, nine interviews were conducted with nine municipalities that do not provide OGD in order to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons for this. The results of this first application of TSLO revealed not only the low participation of Greek local government institutions, and especially of the municipalities, in the OGD movement (with only 8 out of the 332 municipalities providing open data on their portals or websites), but also the inconsistent implementation of this, especially with respect to the use of semantic technologies as well as the legal frameworks under which the open data are provided, resulting in low levels of interoperability among them. The interviews that were conducted revealed that the opening of some of their data was not a priority for them, as their limited resources had to be used for the development of internal information systems for increasing their efficiency, as well as e-services for the citizens, enabling them to conduct transactions electronically (through the Internet). Our study makes a contribution to the still limited body of research on OGD ecosystems, examining an important precondition for their development that has not been researched in previous literature; also, our framework can contribute to the increase of interoperability of OGD infrastructures and therefore to the increase of social and economic value generations for the OGD they provide

Environmental resource management · Interoperability · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Data Quality and Management · E-Government and Public Services · Environmental Science · Open Source Software Innovations

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