Analysing the Characteristics of Open Government Data Sources in Greece

Abstract

Open government data (OGD) initiatives have proliferated over the last years in many countries all over the world as the result of a long-standing movement towards the ‘open government’ paradigm. These initiatives have been launched and maintained by a variety of government organisations with different strategies and technical capacities and under different social, political and legal conditions. As a result, the OGD sources (defined as various types of portals enabling access to government datasets by the public through the Internet and providing various capabilities/functionalities in this direction) developed through these initiatives demonstrate a great diversity in both content, functionality and technology. However, limited research has been conducted on these OGD sources for understanding better their main characteristics from various perspectives and identifying their strengths and weaknesses. This paper contributes to filling this research gap, by presenting an analysis of the thematic, functional, semantic and technological characteristics of OGD sources in Greece. Sixty OGD sources have been analysed from these perspectives, and statistical analysis of relevant characteristics have been performed. Interesting conclusions have been drawn from this analysis, and based on them, recommendations have been formulated for government policy makers, in order to enhance OGD provision in Greece and increase the social and economic values that can be generated from them.