Charalampos Alexopoulos

Designing a Second Generation of Open Data Platforms: Integrating Open Data and Social Media

Two important trends in government that are emerging in the recent years have been on one hand the exploitation of the Web 2.0 social media, supporting a more extensive interaction and collaboration with citizens, and on the other hand the opening of government data to the citizens through the Internet, in order to be used for scientific, commercial and political purposes. However, there has been limited attempt of integrating them. Using a design science approach a second generation of open government data (OGD) platforms has been developed, which offer to the users both the ‘classical’ first generation functionalities, and also a comprehensive set of additional novel Web 2.0 features. The latter aim to provide support to the users in order to generate value from ODG. They enable users to become ‘prosumers’, both producing and consuming data. These novel capabilities for performing various types of processing, information and knowledge exchange, and collaboration were found to be useful and valuable by users in a first evaluation.

A taxonomy of open government data research areas and topics

ABSTRACT The opening of government data, in order to have both social and economic value generated from them, has attracted the attention and interest of both researchers and practitioners from various disciplines, such as information systems, management sciences, political and social sciences, and law. Despite the rapid growth of this multidisciplinary research domain, which has led to the emergence and continuous evolution of technologies and management approaches for open government data (OGD), a detailed analysis of the specific areas and topics of this research is still missing. In this article, a detailed taxonomy of research areas and corresponding research topics of the OGD domain is presented: it includes four main research areas (ODG management and policies, infrastructures, interoperability and usage and value), which are further analyzed into 35 research topics. An important advantage of this taxonomy, beyond its high level of detail, is that it has been developed through extraction and a combination of relevant knowledge from three different sources: important relevant government policy documents, research literature, and experts. For each of the 35 research topics we have identified, its research literature is summarized and main research objectives and directions are highlighted. Based on the taxonomy, an extension of the extant OGD lifecycle is advanced; also, under-researched topics that require further research are identified.

Open data movement in Greece: a case study on open government data sources

Public Sector Information (PSI) is the single largest source of information in Europe. Over the next decade, exploitation of the massive amount of data and the existing public sector infrastructures will result in clear economic and efficiency benefits. This paper aims to create knowledge about Public Sector Open Data in Greece analysing the Public Data landscape from a functional (data acquisition, data provision), semantic (metadata, linked data, multilingualism) and technical perspective (tools, platforms, APIs). The methodology, that is followed in order to analyze the state-of-the-art of PSI in Greece, is presented in a detailed way and is primarily consisted of 4-phases. The main results of the different perspective analysis are summarized and aggregated in order to identify the key elements of the open data movement in Greece while also illustrating the successful initiatives.

An Open Data and Open Services Repository for Supporting Citizen-Driven Application Development for Governance

Open data portals have been a primary source for publishing datasets from various sectors of administration, all over the world. However, making open data available does not necessarily lead to better utilisation from citizens and businesses. Our paper presents a new framework and a prototype system for supporting open application development by citizen communities, through gathering and making available open data and open web services sources from governmental actors, combined with an application development environment, training material and application examples.

Tracking the Evolution of OGD Portals: A Maturity Model

Since its inception, open government data (OGD) as a free re-useable object has attracted the interest of researchers and practitioners, civil servants, citizens and businesses for different reasons in each target group. This study was designed to aggregate the research outcomes and developments through the recent years towards illustrating the evolutionary path of OGD portals, by presenting an analysis of their characteristics in terms of a maturity model. A four-step methodology has been followed in order to analyse the literature and construct the maturity model. The results point out the two greater dimensions of OGD portals, naming traditional and advanced evolving within three generations. The developed maturity model will guide policy makers by firstly identify the current level of their organisation and secondly design an efficient implementation to the required state.

A Classification of Future Internet Enterprise Systems Projects

In a world where the technological progress has surpassed even the most imaginary predictions and the financial crisis presents unprecedented challenges for enterprises, Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) can be an important enabler for boosting enterprise competitiveness, innovation and sustainability. This paper aims at investigating the landscape of projects in the domain of FInES in order to gain insight in the commonalities of their research directions. By synthesizing a classification basis along the FInES and the EISB (Enterprise Interoperability Science Base) dimensions, all completed and running projects have found their positioning in the classification scheme that has been also visualized in an interactive map. The features of a typical FInES project have been highlighted, leading to conclusions that highlight the need for constantly updating the projects’ mapping to depict their advancements and for closer engagement and validation of results by the projects’ members.

A 360-Degree Model for Prioritizing Smart Cities Initiatives, with the Participation of Municipality Officials, Citizens and Experts

Smart cities can be considered a participatory arena for local governments and stakeholders, to co-create communities that can offer development opportunities and quality of life, no matter social group, age, or gender. It constitutes an environment for implementing innovative actions and hence a chance for contribution of many stakeholders. Several studies analyse the “smart city” as an ecosystem based on the triple helix model. In this model three actors are involved: the municipal administration, research organisations, and private sector enterprises (ventures mostly dealing with ICT—Information and Communication Technologies). Recently, research has suggested a central role of the local community as an innovation base, suggesting a Quadruple Helix Model where community works alongside with business, research and government in the new economy. The aim of this chapter is to collect information and propose suggestions regarding actions/projects in smart cities from all the stakeholders mentioned above, thus creating a “360-degree” model for prioritizing smart city interventions in any interested city. Moreover, it applies the developed prioritisation model in the Greek situation and finally, it reaches useful conclusions concerning citizen preferences and the degree of engagement in smart cities actions and projects.

A Taxonomy for Analysing Smart Cities Developments in Greece

Smart city initiatives are designed to develop information technology capacities and establish an agenda for change. It is also very difficult for the municipal authorities to identify, evaluate and implement the proper developments in a world characterised by the multiplicity of available solutions. Consequently, the policy aspect of a smart city is a major challenge in order to create a collaborative approach to innovation ecosystems based on sustainable partnerships among the main stakeholders from business, research, policy and citizen groups and achieve an alignment of local, regional and European policy levels and resources. The objective of this inquiry is to develop an analysis framework to better understand smart city practices in Greece and to identify the barriers where adaptation and improvement may be needed. Furthermore, this study aims at examining the Greek Municipalities in order to identify homogeneous and heterogeneous characteristics in the process of planning and developing a smart city. The study identifies the most important impediments towards smart cities actions development and the correlation between the smart cities population and the number of implemented actions. The results highlight the deviation of implemented and planned smart cities actions based on the proposed taxonomy identifying the most important development areas for Greece.

The Open Data Landscape

The opening of data has grown tremendously over the past decade. More and more datasets have been opened to the public, application programming interfaces (APIs) gave been design for enabling the public to make use of real-time data and new apps based on this data have been developed. Data about policy-making, software code (open sources), documents, minutes, financial data and so on has been opened resulting in a large repository of government data that can be on open data portals and government websites. Nevertheless the potential is even more higher, as most of the data still are closed and not directly accessible by the public. Furthermore, more and more data is collected and can be share in nowadays words driven by The Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT consist of devices that are able to collect data such as GPS (geographical location), Compass, temperature, movement, pollution and so on. Devices collecting data combined with data analytics are expected to transform the government and society. This can provide insight into the energy consumption of smart cities (https://amsterdamsmartcity.com/projects/energy-atlas) or the pollution (http://airindex.eea.europa.eu/). These initiates are all driven by the opening of data and extended by user-friendly apps to enable a large use by the public.

Open Government Data: Areas and Directions for Research

The concept of open data itself is strongly associated with innovative capacity and transformative power (Davies, Perini, & Alonso, 2013). It is increasingly recognized that proactively opening public data can create considerable benefits for several stakeholders, such as firms and individuals interested in the development of value added digital services or mobile applications, by combining various types of Open Government Data (OGD), and possibly other private data. On the other hand, OGD also empowers scientists, journalists and active citizens who want to understand various public issues and policies through advanced data processing and production of analytics (Janssen, 2011a; Zuiderwijk, Helbig, Gil-Garcia, & Janssen, 2014).