5. Promotion of dissemination of open government data and engagement of users

The success of government initiatives aimed at promoting the appropriation and use of open government data depends on the knowledge of the potential community of users and fostering activities to meet specific needs of a variety of categories of users.

These categories can include:

• Citizens searching for data for personal situations or actions.
• Private developers willing to create new permanent services.
• Non-government organization using open data to support social advocacy activities.
• Research institutes demanding aggregated data.
• Users of disaggregated data in real time.
• Companies depending on open government data to provide their services.
• Journalists, media corporations and website operators.

Servers from producer agencies themselves and other government organizations will also become massive users of open government data and the services provided by chains of intermediaries.

These differences must be reflected in the choice of communication channels by agencies, their promotion strategies, their relationships, and all support activities.

Thus, for example, occasional users would be better served by data with straightforward semantics, customised visualisations and creations, for specific needs.

Institutional users, mainly intermediaries and service providers, for whom open government data are essential for their business continuity, can handle data with more complex semantics and longer periods for adoption and familiarisation for users who depend on higher levels of quality for service delivery, with more requirements regarding relationships of trust, predictability, transparency, and stability in production processes and data availability.

Users of these kinds of data, such as those derived from administrative processes (budget, etc.), need information and specific assistance to deal with data access and interpretation.

5.1 Recommendations for promoting engagement

During the preparatory phase, it will be important to identify:

• The kinds of users, and their skillsets, who would benefit from or might be interested in using government open data;
• The formats and means to facilitate access to open government data and its use by users and intermediaries.
• The assistance and quality assurance and data availability that will be required by different groups of users and intermediaries.

The publication of metadata and support for users should reflect specific user needs. The semantics of data resulting from administrative proceedings are more difficult to be described, since it is embedded in the generating systems that are also subject to more frequent changes of the administrative processes. For this reason their users depend on more support from the publisher and leading to a longer learning process.

More specific recommendations for providing service to intermediaries can be found in the guide “Engaging with reusers,” from the Open Data Institute, available at http://theodi.org/guides/engaging-reusers.

Table 3 shows some measures that contribute to engaging users and increase levels of engagement of users/intermediaries.

Quadro 3. Recommendations for engaging users of open government data

Social marketing applied to the dissemination of open government data

According to Kotler (2011)²⁹, social marketing is the application of commercial marketing technologies to analysis, planning, execution, and evaluation of programmes designed to influence voluntary behaviour by target audiences, with the aim of improving their well-being and the society’s (Alan Andreasen, 1995, apud Kotler, 2011), based on the concept of exchange: Target audiences must perceive benefits (not just financial) that match or exceed the perceived costs associated with the behaviours.

The major immediate benefits, however, may not be for intermediaries, but for the rest of chains and communities. Therefore, it will be necessary to create benefits and motivations for intermediaries to take action for the common good.

The promotion of chains of intermediaries of open government data can benefit from research on the motivation of programmers of free open software:

1. Altruism: generosity, working for the common good.
2. Meeting specific needs of their own businesses.
3. Sharing for improvement: Developers receive contributions to improving their products and benefit from development carried out by other developers.
4. Sense of belonging to communities.
5. Recognition: Communities develop formal means of public recognition (social reputation) for relevant contributions.
6. Personal gratification arising from personal growth, overcoming challenges and being admired by peers.

Knowing the motivations of target audiences can help chain promoters identify potential intermediaries and create material and subjective motivations for receiving rewards for their contributions and, above all, motivating continuity of the process.

Some social marketing principles that can be applied to developing chains of intermediaries (Kotler, p. 84) are listed below:

1. Identify the groups to be influenced and the segments likely to undertake marketing in a sustainable manner (this principle emphasises the importance of marketing research):
   1. What the motivations are.
   2. Your perceptions of benefits.
   3. Obstacles.
   4. Motivations needed for engaging in them.
2. Reduce costs for potential intermediaries by:
   1. Facilitating access to technology and financial resources.
   2. Creating a favourable institutional environment.
   3. Creating an information market.
   4. Making the sustainability of initiatives viable.
3. Create means for social recognition of initiatives (increasing exchange value).
4. Encourage sustainable commitments and promises.
5. Follow up results and make adjustments.

Since the focus must be on adding value throughout entire chains, it is important to keep in mind that it is not just “downstream” in ecosystems (i.e., developers and users) that must be reached by social marketing initiatives; “upstream” must also be reached: employees and executives of agencies themselves, as well as influencers, top administrators, legislators, and sponsors (funding agencies, investors, etc.). The needed changes will not be limited just to action, but will mostly have a cognitive nature, and be related to behaviour and values.

During the prioritisation of initiatives, you can take into account target audiences that need the information most, are ready for action, are easier to reached out to, or have stronger affinity with the promoters (Kotler, p. 150).

5.3 Activities for promoting the adoption and use of open government data

Producing/publishing agencies for open data will carry out promotion activities according to the characteristics of potential use of their open data, the users to be reached out to, and their own organisational resources. Some are shown in Table 4.

Quadro 4: Activities for promoting the use of open data

Appendix C shows important considerations for holding events, and the references and guides listed below will supplement specific orientations for some of these initiatives:

1. Civic Innovation Toolkit: How to run a civic hackathon (http://www.smartchicagocollaborative.org/civic-innovation-toolkit-how-to-run-a- civic-hackathon/ e https://hackathon.guide/).
2. How to run a successful hackathon (https://hackathon.guide/).
3. Hackathon best practices guides (http://post.devpost.com/app_contest_resources).
4. Socrata, white papers and guides, Datapalooza How-To Guide and How to Run a Hackathon, available at https://www.socrata.com/papers-guides.

Holding occasional events, such as competitions or hackathons, is adequate for the creation of new ideas or solutions for rapid implementation. However, in order for these initiatives to lead to the creation of sustainable systems or services, it is necessary to supplement them by offering financial, organisational, and infrastructure resources. In the UK, the Open Data Challenge Series (coordinated by the Open Data Institute and Nesta) aimed to harness ideas and innovations created from hackathons and turn them into sustainable business models, over six months per challenge. A report from Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) found that the Open Data Challenge Series generated, on average, a return on investment of five to ten times over (for every £1invested, £5 - £10 value created).³⁰

Large-scale projects require other modalities for motivation, such as data jams, for projects of several months, or even major projects, for which models from funding agencies are more suitable. Private investors can also get involved in these initiatives.