1. Production and use of open government data

Open government data can be published by the government with three objectives:

Facilitating social and economic growth outside government
Improving public services, by increasing the amount of government data accessible to other departments, identifying new potential uses and enabling public and private sector partnerships
For transparency and accountability, to help citizens understand how government works

There are considerable differences between these cases in the dissemination and use of data that will be discussed later.

Although the importance of these data for users can be significantly increased with the addition of data from other non-governmental sources or even from direct interaction with users, this guide will focus on dissemination management and the use of data generated by the government’s own agencies.

1.1 Activities in the open government data value chain

The generation and use of open government data include a value chain that, through a variety of activities in each case, add value to the data for users by producing information and services, as shown in Figure 1.

Figura 1: Chain of possibilities for open government data activities

These activities can be carried out in different sequences, according to user needs and the contributions of actors. The same actors, for instance, producing/publishing agencies themselves, could be responsible for several activities.

Based on Figure 1, actors can be classified according their roles in these activities³.

Production and availability:
- Producers: collect and generate data as a result of the mission of the institution.
- Publishers: organise and prepare the data in open formats and patterns for publishing.
Intermediary activities:
- Enrichers: increase data value through data assessment, arrangement, and elaboration, adding new data or links.
- Aggregators: collect, integrate, and analyse open government data, including other sources that allow them to meet specific information needs.
- Value adders: through processing, selection, analysis, and integration of open government data, add value to products and services; to meet specific user needs.
- Distributors: collect, organise, and redistribute information, as repositories and sites.
- Facilitators: provide platforms or tools to facilitate access to or use of open government data.
- Developers of applications: build and distribute applications for specific purposes.
Users:
- End users (organisations or individuals): use open government data for their own economic, social, or environmental activities.
- Government organizations: use data and services from these networks.

The analysis of this value chain allows producing/publishing organizations to identify gaps in the intermediary chain, and foster or draw up specific activities for themselves, in addition to production activities and making data available.

1.2. Open government data value chain actors

This classification groups actors into three ecosystems, each with their own characteristics, which will require different servicing styles from the producers and publishers of open government data. Treating them as ecosystems, rather than collections of individual actors, helps to achieve significant synergies in disseminating and using open data, which will be discussed later.

Ecosystem of open government data producers and publishers
Ecosystem of information intermediaries
Ecosystem of users

It is evident that the Government plays a major role in all these ecosystems, since it is a producer and user of open government data, and may also take on several roles in the intermediary chain.

Even though the main role of intermediaries is to contribute to the chain that collects information from the producers (public agencies) of open government data and passes it on to internal or external end users, it is important to emphasise that this flow can also be bidirectional and represents an important resource for enriching data and improving public service. Among the possibilities of activities in a bidirectional flow are:

From the government, serving as a producer of open government data, as well as a major user of processed information and services offered by intermediaries. Opening up data can save government money, increasing the availability of and competition among intermediaries offering services to government.
From the contact of intermediaries with users and other sources of data, validating open government data and, at the same time, contributing to the process of continuous improvement of data quality. Opening up data enables others to provide feedback on data quality and drive improvements.
From intermediaries, also creating and collecting data from society that contribute and serve as a basis to inform public policies and government decision making. Opening up data can drive better decision making.
From intermediaries that can further organise contributions of society to government activities through crowdsourcing. Opening up data can help communities convene and collaborate to drive forward change.
From the government, which can also act as a user of open government data combined with other public or private information offered on intermediary websites (commercial). Opening up data can open up more opportunities for private sector collaboration with government.
From intermediaries, serving as communication channels with social organisations and social advocacy activities, providing services, carrying out co-production, and serving as ombudsmen. Opening up data can reduce friction in complex systems.

In addition to these producer-actors, there are sponsors, funding agencies, process managers, and opinion-makers such as educators, advisors, promoters, researchers, and others who contribute to maintaining the processes.

It is up to public agencies to recognise the potential offered by these contributions, encourage actors, and manage their inclusion in management processes and providing government services.

Strategic decisions made by producers/publishers have to do with their own participation in the intermediary chain, offering and adding initiatives from external agents.

This participation will depend on perception of gaps, such as provision of platforms for dealing with and sharing collected data. Agencies may also perceive that requirements for data criticality, quality, and safety demand direct relationships with their end users. In this case, activities can also be delegated to other highly reliable and specialised agencies or public corporations.

In order to interact with these actors, it is necessary to know the community of potential users and their motivations and specific demands. Examples of these communities include:

Individual users seeking information for personal use or for exercising citizenship.
Civil society organisations aiming to provide services to society, carry out social advocacy, and so on.
Users seeking to contribute to improving the processes of services provided by the government.
Companies or individuals using open government data for commercial purposes.
Companies or individuals providing free-of-charge, open government data services (for philanthropic reasons or related to their own businesses).
Other parts of government using data to improve their own services and research
Information intermediaries.
Distributors and suppliers of resources for data access and processing.

It is important to note that there is not a strict division between the categories of users and intermediaries, since users can simultaneously carry out activities to meet their own needs and make their results available for reuse by other users and intermediaries. Actually, actions taken to encourage the reuse of data must be a major goal for public agencies that seek to promote open data. Other actions can be carried out, such as ensuring that public data are worthwhile for users or building trust between producers/publishers and users, taking into account that they help to increase chain synergy and strengthen relationships among user communities. The following chapters provide more detail about such actions.

From the government’s point of view, these possibilities of participation can be classified in terms of contributions to generating value (economic or social) and the level of participation of external agents (see Table 1), with significant implications for the managerial tasks of producers/publishers, which will be dealt with later on.

Quadro 1: Results of the use of open data

Activities that lead to the results in the initial category of “government transparency and accountability” are already required under current laws, whereas the remaining categories are the results of more advanced stages of evolution.

Although this guide is useful for individuals and organisations that access open government data directly, sporadically and specifically for their own use, intermediaries also deserve particular attention, as actors that generate structured and permanent services, since they play a major role as important State partners in supplementing, expanding, and leveraging the social value of open government data.

It is desirable that structuring of the value network of open government data leads to the creation of companies and other entrepreneurial organisations to take over activities on a permanent basis. In order for that to happen, they should rely on sustainable business models.

A great variety of business models is created by these intermediaries to provide chain services, with supporting and operating conditions largely determined by the motivation of users and conditions of use. These motivations can be classified according to their contributions to:

The economy, productivity, and creativity.
Accountability, transparency, autonomy, citizenship, and improvement of the public sector.
Civic engagement, cooperation, volunteering, and sociability.

Intermediaries can develop more complex chains of value to offer inputs for the activities of other intermediaries, rather than just providing direct services to society. The wide range of combinations offered by this network already points to manifold opportunities for community engagement to generate value and create businesses.

Understand and engage with users

Given the relevance of intermediaries to open data ecosystems, producers/publishers could extend their actions to strengthening awareness of open data and its reliability, including further actions to monitor who the intermediaries are and what they do. This monitoring must be used, not for investigation, but to guarantee that producers/publishers can reach out to intermediaries, understand how they use the data, collaborate with them in implementing activities, create open and efficient communication channels, and, consequently, continually improve the production and publication of open government data.

The result of this monitoring can then be openly licenced, including information on businesses generated by open data, how to contact these businesses, their estimated economic impact, earnings and direct jobs, or even what dataset is used. An example of this kind of dissemination is the Impact ⁵ page at www.data.gov, the open data site for the United States federal government.

The publication of the Open Data Plan ⁶ is an example of action to increase awareness of and reliance on open data intermediaries. It includes definitions of standards, publication procedures and selection for future publication, and defined goals. The plan can also include further information on agency accomplishments on a topic, or even highlight the benefits of open data for the government, companies, and citizens. Furthermore, just as with any organisational plan, the Open Data Plan must be reviewed and updated from time to time. Examples such as those from New York City ⁷ or from the United Kingdom8, could serve as a source of inspiration for creation and publication of the plan by the producing/publishing agency.