The Role of Open Data in Smart Cities: Exploring Status in Resource-Constrained Countries

Abstract

Open Data initiatives in public sector frameworks have been poised to be one of the most effective levers for stamping out corruption in public sector organisations. Developing world countries which are endowed with resource constraints are slowly jumping onto the bandwagon to ensure that the governance of information is being put in public domains for effective public scrutiny. To this end, there have been many interventions that have been propagated by resource-constrained countries, one of them being Smart Cities. Smart Cities provide logical and physical information infrastructures which are a prerequisite to the implementation of contemporary Open Data initiatives. This chapter explores the status of realization of the different types of Open Data in the realm of Smart Cities, as well the different challenges that can be met in the implementation cycle of Open Data in Smart City environments. The definitive contribution of this chapter is that it proposes a conceptual framework modelled upon the developing world contextual nuances. This chapter also proposes that the conceptualised framework can be used in different environments with similar contextual attributes of the developing world countries in the design and implementation of Open Data Smart Cities.