Organizational issues: How to open up government data?

Abstract

Governments create and collect enormous amounts of data, for instance concerning voting results, transport, energy, education, and employment. These datasets are often stored in an archive that is not accessible for others than the organization’s employees. To attain benefits such as transparency, engagement, and innovation, many governmental organizations are now also providing public access to this data. However, in opening up their data, these organizations face many issues, including the lack of standard procedures, the threat of privacy violations when releasing data, accidentally releasing policy-sensitive data, the risk of data misuse, challenges regarding the ownership of data and required changes at different organizational layers. These issues often hinder the easy publication of government data.