Iryna Susha

eParticipation research: Systematizing the field

It has been widely acknowledged recently that the research field of eParticipation suffers from lack of comprehensive theoretical contributions, insufficient depth, and inconsistency in definitions of central concepts. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the field researchers find it difficult to consolidate their theoretical groundwork and further theory building in the eParticipation domain. This paper reports a literature study of conceptual publications on the subject of eParticipation/eDemocracy in the time frame of 2007–2009. Its objectives are to track recent theoretical development in the field, to reveal constraints and limitations to researching the area, and to offer some suggestions for further inquiry. The results show that most theories currently used in conceptual eParticipation research originate from the fields of Political Science and Media and Communication Studies. But together with this, contemporary eParticipation authors contribute to strengthening the field with some “in-house” models and frameworks as well. Central problems with eParticipation research concern immaturity of the field, topical gaps, and biased assumptions. The review shows that the themes of recent publications can be grouped into three major categories: stakeholders, environment, and applications and tools. It also finds some interconnections between these categories; however, in general the coupling technology–stakeholders–(participatory) environments is weak.

Organizational measures to stimulate user engagement with open data

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate which organizational measures can facilitate the use of open data. Implementation of open government data initiatives is commonly supply-driven, as it is dif ...

Benchmarks for Evaluating the Progress of Open Data Adoption

Public organizations release their data for use by the public to open the government. Various benchmarks for evaluating the progress of open data adoption have emerged recently. In order to help bring about a better understanding of the common and differentiating elements in open data benchmarks and to identify the methodologies and metrics affecting their variation, this article compares open data benchmarks and describes lessons learned from their analysis. An interpretive meta-analysis approach was used and five benchmarks were compared with regard to metadata (key concepts, themes, and metaphors), meta-methods (methodologies underlying the benchmarks) and metatheories (theoretical assumptions at the foundation of the benchmarks). It was found that each benchmark has its strengths and weaknesses and is applicable in specific situations. Since the open data benchmarks have a different scope and focus and use different methodologies, they produce different results in terms of country ranks. There is an obvious gap in both the literature and benchmarks regarding the evolution of end-user practices and individual adoption of open data. Furthermore, lessons are drawn for the development of more comprehensive open data benchmarks and open government evaluation in general.

Context clues for the stall of the Citizens' Initiative : lessons for opening up e-participation development practice

The European Union recently launched an innovative participatory mechanism allowing its citizens across Europe get together and set the agenda for policy-making in Brussels. The tool - the European ...

Improving the speed and ease of open data use through metadata, interaction mechanisms, and quality indicators

ABSTRACT The use of Open Government Data (OGD) has not kept pace with the expectations as existing OGD infrastructures mainly serve as data repositories. Many OGD infrastructures do not stimulate or support OGD use processes, and there is a lack of research regarding which functionalities can stimulate such processes. The objective of this study is to use a design science approach to evaluate whether metadata, interaction mechanisms, and data quality indicators can improve OGD use. OGD use comprises five main activities, namely searching for and finding OGD, OGD analysis, visualizing OGD, interacting about OGD, and OGD quality analysis. We expect that three OGD key infrastructure elements—metadata, interaction mechanisms, and data quality indicators—allow for improving these five OGD use activities. A prototype of an advanced OGD infrastructure was created, which implements the three OGD infrastructure elements. Three quasi-experiments with a pretest posttest control group design were conducted. The quasi-experiments showed that the prototype facilitated the usability of the novel OGD use functionalities. Our quasi-experiments supported our propositions that metadata, interaction mechanisms, and data quality indicators contribute to making OGD use easier and faster, and enhance the user experience. The infrastructure elements improved OGD use by better enabling searching, analyzing, visualizing, discussing, giving feedback on, and assessing the quality of open data. Hence, we plea for integrating metadata, interaction mechanisms, and data quality indicators in open data infrastructures to advance open data usage.

Data Collaboratives as a New Frontier of Cross-Sector Partnerships in the Age of Open Data: Taxonomy Development

Data collaboratives present a new form of cross-sector and public-private partnership to leverage (often corporate) data for addressing a societal challenge. They can be seen as the latest attempt ...

Driving factors of service innovation using open government data: An exploratory study of entrepreneurs in two countries

Open government data offers great potential for innovation and growth in various sectors of societal life. The use of open data is expected to power the development of new or enhanced services and ...

A communication genre perspective on e-petitioning : the case of the Citizens' Initiative

The European Citizens’ Initiative is designed to make European democracy more directby allowing citizens to propose (including electronically) legal acts to the Commission. The present paper offers a conceptual model for the analysis of this eParticipation case, and other similar e-petitioning practices, which is not biased by political ambition or technological determinism. The operational framework proposed aims to understand the nature of communication between citizens, governments, and the civil society among other stakeholders in the contemporary media landscape by using the concept of genre systems for this purpose.

Open Data Research in the Nordic Region: Towards a Scandinavian Approach?

Since 2009 open data has been growing into a specialized research area, including in the Nordic countries. Historically Information Systems research from this region has managed to develop a distinct identity on the international research arena. Hence, the expectation is that also in the context of open data there exists room for unique contributions of Nordic researchers. However, no systematic overview exists yet of the open data research conducted in these countries or of the emerging research community. This paper, therefore, aims to fill this gap by conducting a comprehensive literature review. Our study focuses on the following aspects: (1) which perspectives and topics are examined and (2) which empirical settings and methods are applied in Nordic open data research. Finding answers to these questions will enable us to propose a future research agenda and thereby stimulate debate in the Nordic open data research community.

Workshop on critical success factors for open data : from policy to participation and innovation

Open data offer tremendous potential for participation and innovation. Yet open data providers and users are puzzled about what to do and what are key issues they should concentrate on. In this wor ...