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Original article
DOI: 10.17323/1999-5431-2022-0-5-30-44
HOW OPEN IS OPEN? A STUDY OF TWO IRISH OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA WEBSITES
1 Mashael Khayyat,
2 Omar Aboulola,
3 Manal Khayyat
1 2 Department of Information Systems and Technology, College of Computer Science and Engineering, Jeddah University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
1 Associate professor, Mkhayyat@uj.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0003-3770-432X
2 Assistant professor, Oaboulola@uj.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0003-3928-2562
3 Assistant professor, Department of Computer Science, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia, mmkhayat@uqu.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0003-0830-4757
Abstract. In discussions of Open Government Data (hereafter referred to as open data or OGD) in the academic literature, the question of what is meant by the word "open" has to date received only limited attention. The use of Open Government Data (OGD) has spread globally as governments make more of their data available via electronically accessible formats for individuals to use and share. OGD is seen as something that has the potential to play an important role in achieving transparency, and accountability, enabling new forms of civic participation, and stimulates economic growth and development. However, there is a need to examine OGD datasets to determine whether they are truly open. The purpose of this paper is to investigate OGD openness based on a number of existing or proposed open data definitions and principles. The principles proposed by the work of the Open Government Working Group will be analyzed. The methodology that has been used to collect the data includes OGD website content analysis, participant observation and semi-structured interviews using purposeful and snowball sampling techniques. The results in this paper are just part of the overall study. This research has not been funded. The research limitation is that it has been done only in the Irish context. It is an original study with primary data. The conclusion of this research mainly demonstrates that OGD in the Irish context is progressing but requires further work to be open based on the principles proposed by the Open Government Working Group works.
Keywords: Open Data, Open Government Data, The Eight Sebastopol Principles.
For citation: Khayyat, M., Aboulola, O. and Khayyat, M. (2022) 'How open is open? A study of two Irish open government data websites', Public Administration Issues, 5 (Special Issue II, electronic edition), pp. 30-44 (in English). DOI: 10.17323/1999-5431-2022-0-5-30-44.
Acknowledgments: We would like to thank all interviewees. Finally, this acknowledgment will be incomplete if we did not thank Dr. Frank Bannister for his continues support, and the researchers who made their work accessible to motivate others. We will say as Irish people say, "Thanks a million" or "Go raibh maith agat".
Abbreviations
CoCo: County Council
OKF: Open Knowledge foundation
OD: Open data
OGD: Open government data
API: Application programming interface
Introduction and background
Open government data (OGD) is explained as a philosophical concept that governments should promote transparency, accountability, and value creation by making their data and policies available (OECD, 2020). Zainal et al. (2019) indicate that the number of studies that focused on the intention to use open government data is still small even though numerous studies have been conducted to measure the level of use of other information technologies such as e-govern-ment, e-commerce, and online banking (Zainal et al. 2019.)
Warraich et al. (2019) mention that governments around the world have been transforming themselves into electronic governments due to the increase in information and communication technologies, thereby encouraging citizens to participate in government processes and to use open data sets. The use of OGD has spread globally as governments make more of their data available via electronically accessible formats for individuals to use and share. Oh (2013) states that over the past decade there has been a movement towards open data, particularly government data.
According to Sheridan and Tennison (2010), the most 'notable' OGD initiatives up to that time have been the launch of data.gov in the USA and data.gov. uk in the UK. They write those governments and local authorities worldwide have started to put their data online. Countries such as the USA, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Austria and Denmark now publish data online for citizens to use without any restrictions.
Ubaldi (2013) claims, "OGD has the potential to increase government efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation in service delivery and internal operations in the public sector " (p.14). Moreover, Heusser (2012) writes that OGD has become an important issue for many people and organisations such as academics, policymakers, computer scientists, civil society organisations and start-ups and
technology corporations. In 2007, Berners-Lee urged people to claim their right to government-held data because he saw the potential of OGD. He describes it as a means to achieve greater transparency and accountability as well as better public services (as cited in Heusser, 2012). Furthermore, Davies and Bawa (2012b) state that OGD is seen as something that plays an important role in achieving transparency and accountability of states. They believe that OGD enables new forms of civic participation and stimulates economic growth and development. In their research, Davis and Bawa found over 100 OGD initiatives across the globe. The initiatives varied from community-led OGD projects, government-led developments and civil society-initiated work to the World Bank sponsored OGD programs and the World Wide Web Foundation supported programs. With all these initiatives seeking OGD promises, the question that arises is whether GD can truly be considered open based on the existing definitions and principles. OGD is a large movement across the world and more research is needed to understand the process of opening data in such a way. Below is an overview of various definitions and the principles of OGD.
Definitions of OGD
One of the problems with OGD is defining precisely what is meant by the term. There are various definitions to be found in the literature and not all of them are compatible. Most definitions describe OGD as government data that can be shared with the public, that is freely accessible, and that can be manipulated. OKF (2020) establishes principles that define "openness" in relation to data, which can be summarised as: "Open data and content can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose." According to Klessmann et al. (2012), OGD is defined as follows: "Open government data are those data of the public administration which are made available to third parties for their reuse. Whether the data provided can be described as open depends on various factors, such as accessibility, formats and the legal conditions under which the data may be used." (p.8)
This definition simply defines OGD as data used in public administration and mentions some key factors (accessibility, formats, and legal conditions). However, Klessmann et al.'s definition of OGD is not precise enough and it is too vague to be helpful. In contrast, Barry and Bannister (2014), define OGD as: "Open government data is the idea that data collected and stored by government organisations belong to the citizens of the country and, where possible, this data should be released to the citizens." (p.5)
This is a more conceptual definition positioning OGD as an idea rather than a practice. Taking into account the different definitions of OGD by different authors, we consider important the statement of Ubaldi (2013) that in most definitions of OGD there are two key elements, namely: government data and open data. Government data are defined as any data and information produced or commissioned by public bodies. Open data are data that can be freely used, reused and distributed by anyone, only subject to (at the most) with a requirement that users attribute the data and that they make their work available for sharing. The following section discusses the work of some organisations that have made efforts to develop OGD principles and qualities.
OGD principles and qualities
It has been claimed that the OGD movement has added significant value to the nations in many aspects such as politically, socially, and economically (Wang and Shepherd, 2020). Zhao and Fan (2018) clarify that data variables, resources, technical capacity, and organizational arrangements are the criteria that decide the open data capacity. Furthermore Wang and Shepherd (2020) discover in their research that the majority of the UK OGD is informational and unfortunately a few of these advertised as open data are actually open, which motivates this study to examine the situation of Irish OGD. Thus, it is important to understand the principles behind OGD when it comes to publishing and using OGD more effectively. With this in mind, a multidisciplinary group of advocates and transparency experts gathered in California in 2007 to understand what OGD means and to develop a basic list of principles that OGD policies must meet to be considered as such (Heusser, 2012; Ubaldi, 2013). Proponents agreed on eight OGD principles known as "the eight Sebastopol principles" (see Table 1). Heusser contends that these eight principles are the most frequently cited and complete characterisations of OGD available in the literature. He points out that government data are considered to be open when it fulfils each of the principles.
Table 1
The eight OGD principles
1. Complete: Data should be available. Public data are data that are not subject to valid privacy, security
or privilege limitations.
2. Primary: Data are as collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity, not
in aggregated or modified forms.
3. Timely: Data are made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.
4. Accessible: Data are available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.
5. Machine processable: Data are reasonably structured to allow automated processing.
6. Non-discriminatory: Data are available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.
7. Non-proprietary: Data are available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.
8. License-free: Data are not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation.
Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be permitted
Sources: Adopted from (opengovdata, 2007; Ubaldi, 2013; Heusser, 2012).
Licensing of OGD attracts the interest of many researchers which reflects the importance of this subject in OGD context (Mockus and Palmirani, 2015; Kucera, 2017; Khayyat and Bannister, 2015; Abubakar, 2019). After all these efforts to guide the OGD initiatives, and in light of all the promises of OGD, there is a gap in research that investigates OGD openness. Most studies in the field of OGD focus on understanding the benefits, barriers to adoption and myths of OGD. However, so far, few studies have been focused on the openness of datasets in OGD portals (Vancauwenberghe, 2018; Akyurek et al., 2018). This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the openness of available datasets. The research question is: To what extent is the data provided by the government to the public really open? To answer this question, qualitative multiple case studies were conducted. The methodology used is explained in the following section.
Methods
This study is a qualitative research that uses a multiple case study methodology with two main cases and two supporting cases. The two main case studies are Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council. They were selected because they both have operational OGD websites (Dublinked.ie and Data.Fingal.ie respectively). South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Councils do not have OGD websites and were therefore used as supporting cases. Currently, Dublinked. ie supports all other Dublin authorities with their open data. The data collection methods and data analysis are discussed in the following sections.
Data collection
The two main data collection methods used this study are participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Each method is briefly described below.
Participant Observation
In participant observation, researchers observe phenomena of interest in the environment to gain information that cannot be obtained by other methods. In this study, ten participant observations were made through attending OGD community meetings and events that include interested communities and county council members. Through these participant observations, a number of ideas were discussed and proposed with the communities involved in OGD, leading to insights and a better understanding of how OGD is implemented and used in the Irish context. Table 2 shows the participant observation schedule.
Table 2
Participant observations
Event Location
Open innovation Dublin Castle - Dublin
Launching Code for Ireland Dublin Castle - Dublin
Code for Ireland (meet-up) meeting Facebook HQ -Dublin
Open innovation 2.0 The Convention Centre- Dublin
Code for Ireland (meet-up) meeting Google Docks Building - Dublin
Code for Ireland (meet-up) meeting Amazon offices, Dublin 4
BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition RDS: 550 great projects, BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2015
Dublinked Innovation Network - Data Analytics Event Dublin Institute of Technology, Grange Gorman Campus - Dublin
The UK Future Cities Catapult discussion in Dublin Mansion House - Dublin
Smart Dublin collaborating to solve challenges Google Foundry, Dublin
Sources: Compiled by authors (- hereinafter, unless otherwise noted).
Semi structured interviews
44 interviews were conducted and the choice of using a semi-structured interview approach was employed because it provides sufficient flexibility to approach different respondents and ask them about their views of OGD based on their experiences with OGD. The interview questions were built upon the fourth generation of activity theory aspects (Fig. 1) to cover all the important points regarding the activity of releasing the data as open in portals (Mwanza, 2002; Khayyat, 2016). Both purposeful and Snowball sampling techniques were used to recruit interviewees. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim with the permission of the participants. Interviews were conducted over a five-month period (Tab. 3).
Figurel. Fourth Generation of Activity Theory
Source: (Khayyat, 2016).
Table 3
Interviews Schedule
Category # Interviews # Interviewees Type
County Councils (CoCo) seven members have been interviewed
Dublin city CoCo 1 1 email
Fingal CoCo 2 2 F2F and Phone
South Dublin CoCo 1 1 F2F
DLR CoCo. 2 3 F2F
Organizations - 15 members have been interviewed
Open Knowledge Ireland 2 2 F2F
Open Street Map 2 2 F2F and Phone
Central Statistics office 2 2 F2F
Institute of Public Health 1 2 F2F
Marine Institute (Galway) 1 1 video
Category # Interviews # Interviewees Type
Organizations - 15 members have been interviewed
IBM 1 1 F2F
Digital Repository of Ireland 1 1 F2F
Department of Public Expender and Reform 1 2 email
Heritage Council 1 1 phone
St. James Hospital LAMP project) 1 1 phone
Academics / Researchers - eight members have been interviewed
DIT 1 1 F2F
TCD 1 1 F2F
Maynooth University 3 3 F2F
UCD 1 1 F2F
Insight Centre for Data Analytics, NUI, Galway 2 2 F2F and Video
International experts - seven members have been interviewed
Spain (Barcelona COCO) 1 2 video
Canadian non-profit organization (Casrai) 1 1 video
USA, OD Consultant 1 1 phone
UK, Future Cities Catapult 1 1 phone
Worldwide web foundation 1 1 video
Netherlands, Academics 2 2 Video
Communities - ten members have been interviewed
Code for Ireland 1 1 phone
Parking developer 1 1 F2F
MyQ.ie developer 1 1 F2F
ParkYa developer 1 1 F2F
Apps4Gaps.IE and Cododojo 1 1 phone
Risk project manager 1 1 F2F
Interested community in open data analytics 3 3 F2F and Email
Drimnagh is good community 1 1 F2F
Total 44 48
Table 3 illustrates the breakdown of interviewees by category and medium (face to face [F2F], phone, video and email). An additional six interviews were conducted but not transcribed because saturation level was reached and no further information could be added.
Data analysis
Two sources of material were analysed in this study; OGD website content analysis and thematic analysis of the interview transcripts.
Website content analysis. Both OGD websites (Dublinked.ie and Data.fin-gal.ie) were analysed by examining available datasets, dataset formats, licensing, and ease of access. Separately, the results and outputs of communities actively creating content from OGD were studied by analysing their blogs, applications, and created services. The website analysis helped to formulate the interview questions.
Thematic analysis of interview transcripts. Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) was used to analyse the opinions of the interviewees. It was facilitated by the use of NVivo software. Care was taken to ensure the data accuracy, so the analysis phase was carried out after sending the interview transcripts back to interviewees for data validation.
Results
One of the results of the website content analysis reveals there are technical challenges in providing OGD1. The Dublinked website states that there are technical challenges in providing data to the standard where the data can be used for reliability, consistency, commercial purposes and quality. To address this issue and to protect data owners from any liability in this regard, there is a disclaimer statement: "All data linked to the Open Data portal is published "as is".
The Information is licensed 'as is' and the Information Provider and/or Licensor excludes all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities in relation to the Information to the maximum extent permitted by law. The Information Provider and/or Licensor are not liable for any errors or omissions in the Information and shall not be liable for any loss, injury or damage of any kind caused by its use.
The Information Provider does not guarantee the continued supply of the Information. This statement could make users hesitant to rely on the datasets because they cannot guarantee the reliability, consistency, commercial use, quality and sustainability. Thus, one might question the validity of its 'openness' on the basis of this disclaimer alone.
On the other hand, the results of the exploration of interviewees' experiences with OGD with regards to the openness aspect, showed that there is an opportunity for improving OGD in the Irish context. Many interviewees indicated that they believe OGD is still in its early stages. Below, each principle is explained by the interviewees' perspective and supported by quotes from the interviewees to illustrate what works and what does not work in the Irish context.
1 URL: http://dublinked.ie/open-data-licence-change-creative-commons-licence-recommended-for-public-sector-open-data/
OGD Principles
1. Completeness: Data should be available. Public data are data that is not subject to valid privacy, security, or privilege limitations.
Most community members articulate their dissatisfaction with the availability of data sets that they need. For example, one of the interviewees from the academic category commented that the available OGD on Dublinked.ie is not beneficial for him for the following reasons:
- It is not complete.
- There is no clear metadata.
- Not all data sets are open, as some of them are marked with an 'M' meaning they are only accessible to members of the Dublinked website.
- It is difficult to communicate with the people in charge of open data on Dublinked.ie
This interviewee covered four principles, which are complete, primary, and non-discriminatory. None of these four principles are fully applied to the data sets that users are dealing with.
Moreover, one of the interested community members complained about missing data, he said: "I asked for the data related to the Dog Warden collecting stray dogs to be area specific to see if there is a socioeconomic element to areas that stray dogs are collected in. [he] discussed this with the [the local authorities] three years ago, but they still have not made the dog collection data area specific".
This interviewee describes two problems. The first one is a lack of data availability. The second is that the waiting period is too long for local authorities to take action.
The other categories of interviewees did not comment on this principle.
2. Primary: Data are as collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity, not in aggregated or modified forms.
Almost all interviewees' categories of interviewees mentioned the lack of availability of metadata, which is important to be addressed in order to make the data sets clearer.
3. Timeliness: Data are made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.
Most of the interviewees did not comment on the principle of timeliness. However, two community members hesitated to use the OGD because they articulate their frustration with some data sets being updated.
4. Accessible: Data are available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.
Only the communities and organization members interested in dealing with OGD commented on the challenges they faced to access some of data sets. One interviewee revealed that there were limitations in accessing some of the data sets on Dublinked.ie. For example, the 'O' indicator means the data set is open, while the 'M' indicator means that the user must be a member to access this dataset (see Fig. 2). That means Dublinked.ie is not open by OKF's definition. For example, when public users click on 'M' datasets they are redirected to a page like Figure. 3 that states "Limited access, data available to members only".
Datasets for Category: Land Use & Zoning
Descriptttn t Categories 0 Region » Agenty i
2005-201 iDuMn City Development Plan - Zoning Land Use & Zoning Dublin City Dublin Crty Count!
Щ 21110 ■ 2016 Amenities Areas Land Use & Zoning South Cubic1! EsUft Dublin County Count)
2010 ■ 2016 Development Plan Amenities Land Use i Zoning South Dublr South Dublin County Council
|cj| 2010 ■ 2016 Development Plan Areas sensitive to Forestry land Use S Zoning South Oublii Swth Dublin County Council
|g)] 2510 - 2016 Development Plan Future Transportation objectives Land Use & Zoning South Dublin South Dublin County Council
2010 - 2016 Development Plan Protected Structures Land Use & Zoning South Dubfti South Dublin County Council
9 X sample Topographic Tiles Land Use & Zoning Dublin Region Ordnance Survey Ireland
Figure 2. Dublinked datasets example
Source: Dublinked [http://dublinked.com/datastore/by-category/land-use-zoning.php].
Access Permissions Limited access, data available to members only
Licence or Use Constraints Osi T&Cs
Language eng
Spatial Projection Irish Grid (IG;EPSG:29902}
Figure 3. Restricted dataset example
Source: Dublinked [http://dublinked.com/datastore/by-category/land-use-zoning.php].
5. Machine processable: Data are reasonably structured to allow automated processing.
Most interviewees did not mind having the data in any format if it is available. The concern of most interest is just to have the datasets. An interviewee in the organisations category revealed that while every effort has been made to provide comprehensive information, the directory is not complete, and the accuracy of the metadata cannot always be guaranteed. She commented that datasets are in HTML or PDF format, which means that the data are not available for reuse and it is therefore difficult to extract by automated means. The interviewee insists; "Open data must be both technically and legally open o".
6. Non-discriminatory: Data are available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.
Based on only two interviewees' points of view since Dublinked datasets requires registration as shown in Figure 2 where 'O' symbol means open while 'M' Symbol means open dataset only for members, thus the principle number 4 "accessible" is not fulfilled in this case.
7. Non-proprietary: Data are available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.
Based on the website content analysis, some datasets in Dublinked and Fingal open data are available in different formats to facilitate the use without exclusive control. This shows that the non-proprietary principle is valid in the cases of Dublinked and Fingal open data. See Figure 4 and Figure 5.
T Formats
CSV (129) xrnl (42) km I (36) pdf (19) zip (17) shx (17)
Figure 4. Dublinked datasets formats
Source: URL: https://data.dublinked.ie/dataset
ACA Boundaries
Architectural Conservation Areas in Fingal
Airport
Location of airports with contact information.
Figure 5. Fingal datasets formats
Source: URL: http://data.fingal.ie/ViewDataSets/
8. License-free: Data are not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed.
Most interviewees from all categories have an issue with licensing in OGD. For example, one member of the communities interested in OGD discussed the availability, updating, and licensing of OGD. Interviewees appeared to not have a grasp on the area of licensing as they expressed their fear of having trouble when
using OGD because some terms and conditions were unclear for them. He said, "I think people that look at it though get very frustrated immediately. With the licensing they get frustrated, with the limited amount of data available they want more exciting data. A lot of the information that's on Dublinked and Fingal Open Data, I think, Fingal Open Data is probably better than Dublinked, it's a bit more up-to-date, not quite real-time, but it's more up-to-date and interesting information".
Here the interviewee mentioned the word 'frustrated', which reflects user dissatisfaction for many reasons, such as unclear licensing, limited amount of data, and not updating data in a timely manner. He described it as a huge risk to rely on data that may have unclear licensing: "The licenses available on the Dublinked website because it says you can't do anything immoral or illegal with it. It's not a clear standard, what do they mean by immoral? There's a huge risk in it for me right, if I went and developed an App based on open data and I spent a year doing it; blood sweat and tears, weekends, nights and spent all the money buying the domains and hosting it and all that kind of stuff and really poured my soul into it an launched it and then Dublinked said, 'Oh, that's immoral, sorry you can't do that anymore'".
This interviewee seems to have lost trust in OGD availability and suffer from licensing terms and conditions ambiguity. These two aspects (availability and licensing) are important and need to be addressed to have truly open data.
It seems that licensing of OGD is still not fully understood and acts as a barrier to the use of OGD by some users who are unsure about the licensing terms and conditions. This highlights the importance to address this issue in further research.
There are also some opinions from the interviewees out of the principles area, for example, a member of Code for Ireland suggested consulting experts internationally would be beneficial for OGD in the Irish context to enhance its availability, which shows that data are partially or completely unavailable. In this case, the availability of the required data sets is a concern that needs to be addressed. From an international consultant's perspective , one of the international interviewees expressed his concerns about the openness of Dublinked.ie and Fingal OD. He said, "There's tiny pockets of open data, mostly from Dominic Burns' Fingal portal right. To a limited extent, the Dublinked effort has also yielded some open data and finally, there was an effort, although I think it was very problematic in launching a national portal [...] but that effort has been roundly criticised on many levels. One: poor data reuse potential. Second: irrelevant release of poor-quality data sets and then third, the platform itself has a very poor API, and then finally, there is no legal basis for any kind of licensing of this data.
This interviewee revealed that the national portal (apart from local government websites) seems to have four problems with publishing open data. The problems are:
- Low potential for data reuse.
- Irrelevant publication of poorquality data sets.
- The platform itself has an unsatisfactory API.
- There is no legal basis for any kind of licensing this data.
He commented: "So, it's kind of failed on all fronts. It's not a criticism against the Reform Minister or CIO, but I think, in my humble opinion, they made an honest effort to try and make data open. I think though, that relying on public servants and people in organisations paid by the national government to do this without outside validation from the international community is going to lead to continued fail-
ure." In his statement he insists on the need to consulting international outsiders to solve the Irish OGD issues.
OGD from local government (local authorities) perspective
One of the Dublin local authorities members emphasised the importance of funding and initiatives to open data formally. He said:
"If those focused initiatives that I spoke about were in place, if there was funding available to do it, I think we would see it catching on a lot quicker. So, at the moment, it's organic development of open data." The interviewee also believed that the slow progress concerning publishing OGD is caused by a lack of funding. This indicates that OGD needs more support to become open. It also indicates that the available datasets are not completely open. For example, the first principle (completeness) is not applied in current OGD. Therefore, despite the progress in publishing OGD, funding is needed to address issues from a perspective of local authority member.
Discussion
The results of this research reveal that OGD publishers need focused initiatives and funding. It also proves there is a reasonable level of dissatisfaction amongst users. Many data sets were analysed which do not comply with the principles of OGD, as shown in table IV and it proves what Davies and Bawa (2012a) described as partial and incomplete government data. Accordingly, there are datasets in Dublinked and Fingal OD that are not open. However, there are regular meetings between local authorities members and interested communities to develop and enhance the situation of OGD in the Irish context.
This paper shows that there are different perspectives on the OGD openness but almost all interviewees agreed that OGD needs a lot of work to be open. This also proves that there are criteria that determine the openness capacity, namely data variables, resources, technical capacity and organizational arrangement as mentioned by Zhao and Fan (2018). Dublin local authorities need human and financial resources, as publishing data is both time and money consuming. Dublin local authorities do not have full time employees to work on OGD and it is still considered as an additional task that done by interested people and not because it is part of their work. This can be considered as the main reason for the slow progress of having full open datasets that comply with the definition and principles of Open Knowledge Foundation
Users expressed their frustration with OGD due to many factors, such as unclear licensing, out-of-date data, incomplete data and difficult formats such as pdf. The licensing issue appeared as a vital issue to be clarified and addressed which confirms the research in the literature review by Mockus and Palmirani (2015), Kucera (2017), Khayyat and Bannister (2015) and Abubakar (2019). Some interviewees who are willing to build business based on OGD hesitate to use it because they cannot guarantee its sustain-ability, and they suggested to provide the open data in .CSV and JASON formats to be utilized more dynamically instead of static PDF format. However, OGD in the Irish context is on the way of progress and meetings and discussions of improving it is ongoing.
Conclusion
The main goal of the current study was to investigate the openness of OGD based on OGD proposed principles. The empirical research was conducted through participant observations and semi-structured interviews including five categories (Dublin local authority members, organization members, academics, international experts and communities). In conclusion, while OGD has become the focus of global attention with many promises, there are datasets that do not meet the criteria for openness based on the principles proposed by the Open Government Working Group works. However, OGD in the Irish context is on the way of progress, and meetings and discussions about its improvement are ongoing. This paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of OGD in practice.
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The article was submitted: 11 July 2021; approved after reviewing: 06 December 2021; accepted for publication: 14 April 2022.
