Open government data catalogs: Current approaches and quality perspective

Abstract

Open Government Data (OGD) is seen as a key factor of Open Government initiatives. However, government data is often scattered across various government websites which makes them difficult to find. OGD catalogs serve as a single point of access to open government datasets and thus support discovery and use of OGD. In this paper we define the term Open Government Data and present current OGD activities in the Czech Republic. Number of the OGD catalogs has been established over the past years, but recent experience shows that the quality of the catalog records might affects the ability of users to locate the data of their interest. Therefore we discuss the quality of the catalog records and we propose relevant techniques for its improvement. In addition to the academic perspective authors reflect the experience they gained as coauthors of the Open data cataloging strategy of the Czech public administration. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.