Presented at the 2012 Open Access Week program, "The Open Data Revolution: Challenges and Innovations" in the Fall 2012.

Open Government Data (OGD) has become a topic of prominence during the last decade. However, most governments have not realized the desired outcomes from OGD, which implies that the envisaged value streams have not been realized. This study defines three objectives that will help address this shortcoming. First, it seeks to identify the causal mechanisms that lead to effective institutionalization and sustainability of OGD initiatives in a developing country context. Second, it seeks to identify the social, economic, cultural, political structures and components that describe the OGD context. Third, it seeks to identify the underlying contextmechanism- outcome (CMO) configurations in the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI). The guiding philosophy for this qualitative study is critical realism, which is implemented using Pawson & Tilley's realist evaluation model. Data is obtained through observation of open data events, semi-structured interviews and documentary materials from websites and policy documents. Fereday & Muir-Cochrane's five-stage thematic analysis model is applied in conducting data analysis. Three main contributions arise from this study. The first contribution is the open data institutionalization analysis guide. This study collates several institutionalization concepts from literature with the aim of developing a lens for analyzing OGD initiatives. The second contribution is the identification of supporting mechanisms, including a description of the current CMO configurations. The resulting case study provides an in-depth account of KODI between 2011 and 2016. This will assist policy makers in understanding the current setup, identifying gaps, and establishing or supporting existing support structures and mechanisms. The third contribution is related to scarcity of empirical work based on critical realism in the field of information systems. This research will act as a reference point for future IS research, in determining how critical realism can be applied to conduct similar studies.

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By tradition, archival sciences has emerged in a context with defined information processes, with explicit information producers and custodians to which consumers make requests for the information. In this process, the archival science has developed methods and strategies to preserve authentic and reliable records and by that providing trustworthy information. In an online society, people are using the internet to get information for different purposes. Even though there is no legal obligation to guarantee the authenticity, it is of societal importance that the end users get trustworthy information. In this online context, open data is a trend that is growing fast over the world and it is interesting because its conditions raises many questions regarding authenticity. Since open data is free to reuse, link and combine with other information, and it is preferably in primary format it raises questions about how to maintain the integrity and identity of the information, which is the constituents of authenticity as it is used in this work. The idea in this essay is to discuss challenges with maintaining the authenticity for open data and also identify possible measures to promote authentic open data information on the web, so that the end users get the possibilities to assess its trustworthiness and fit for use. The essay is a qualitative text analyses, with the theoretical base in the InterPARES project results. Open Government Working groups 8 principles and Open Knowledge Foundations definition is discussed, as is also the discussion from other disciplines about provenance on the web, and ideas from digital records forensic. The results indicate that there are great challenges to maintain the authenticity of open data but there are also some solutions. Recorded provenance and traceability are key factors to enable the evaluation of the authenticity. But first the concept authenticity has to be interpreted in a wider sense. There is a need to maintain the authenticity of the parts, the data, in the information. Because the information is used in parts and if the new information created from it will be reliable, it need accurate data with established identity.

Statistical data about cities, regions and at country level is collected for various purposes and from various institutions. Yet, while access to high quality and recent such data is crucial both for decision makers as well as for the public, all to often such collections of data remain isolated and not re-usable, let alone properly integrated. In this paper we present the Open City Data Pipeline, a focused attempt to collect, integrate, and enrich statistical data collected at city level worldwide, and republish this data in a reusable manner as Linked Data. The main feature of the Open City Data Pipeline are: (i) we integrate and cleanse data from several sources in a modular and extensible, always up-to-date fashion; (ii) we use both Machine Learning techniques as well as ontological reasoning over equational background knowledge to enrich the data by imputing missing values, (iii) we assess the estimated accuracy of such imputations per indicator. Additionally, (iv) we make the integrated and enriched data available both in a we browser interface and as machine-readable Linked Data, using standard vocabularies such as QB and PROV, and linking to e.g. DBpedia. Lastly, in an exhaustive evaluation of our approach, we compare our enrichment and cleansing techniques to a preliminary version of the Open City Data Pipeline presented at ISWC2015: firstly, we demonstrate that the combination of equational knowledge and standard machine learning techniques significantly helps to improve the quality of our missing value imputations; secondly, we arguable show that the more data we integrate, the more reliable our predictions become. Hence, over time, the Open City Data Pipeline shall provide a sustainable effort to serve Linked Data about cities in increasing quality. / Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operations

Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / The increasing importance of media, especially digital media in society has been studied widely, from identity formation to activist movements. In international relations, digital media studies have focused considerably on public digital diplomacy and social networks, sometimes neglecting a crucial step: the making, the processing and the transmission of the sacrosanct and secret diplomatic data. This study aims to explore how digital revolutions impact on the way diplomats communicate and share information. The dependent question will revolve around the notion of secrecy; the independent question will analyse secrecy in the era of digital diplomacy. A statistical database was built and semi-structured interviews with American, French and South African diplomats have been conducted. It aims to highlight three thematic fields. The first one looks into organization, legitimacy, sovereignty and governance issues raised by the emergence of new technologies. The second one looks into the redefinition of secrecy in our digital era. The third part is a case study that will investigate how software, open platforms and processing of computerized data redefine, modernize and legitimize the way diplomats work, share information and engage with the general public for the greater good. The main assumption is that public action will only be legitimate in society if – and only if – society recognizes the state as a true network actor.

The principle of Open Data and Linked data is in growing interest of many organizations, developers and even government institutions. This work is aimed on providing actual information about development of Open and Linked data, further there are introduced featured tools for creating, manipulating, transformation and other operations regarding Open and Linked Data. Finally, there is description of development of Linked Data application based on universal visualization system Payola.

The diploma thesis introduces the domain of proactive disclosure of public sector information via linked open data. At the start, the legal framework encompassing public sector information is expounded along with the basic approaches for its disclosure. The practices of publishing data as open data are defined as an ap- proach for proactive disclosure that is based on the application of the principle of openness to data with the goal to enable equal access and equal use of the data. The reviewed practices range from necessary legal actions, choices of appropriate technologies, and ways in which the technologies should be used to achieve the best data quality. Linked data is presented as a knowledge technology that, for the most part, fulfils the requirements on open technology suitable for open data. The thesis extrapolates further from the adoption of linked open data in the public sector to recognize the impact and challenges proceeding from this change. The distinctive focus on the side supplying data and the trust in the transformative effects of technological changes are identified among the key sources of these challenges. The emphasis on technologies for data disclosure at the expense of a more careful attention to the use of data is presented as a possible source of risks that may undermine the...

Yes / Government legislation and calls for greater levels of oversight and transparency are leading public bodies to publish their raw datasets online. Policy makers and elected officials anticipate that the accessibility of open data through online Government portals for citizens will enable public engagement in policy making through increased levels of fact based content elicited from open data. The usability and benefits of such open data are being argued as contributing positively towards public sector reforms, which are under extreme pressures driven by extended periods of austerity. However, there is very limited scholarly studies that have attempted to empirically evaluate the performance of government open data websites and the acceptance and use of these data from a citizen perspective. Given this research void, an adjusted diffusion of innovation model based on Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory (DOI) is proposed and used in this paper to empirically determine the predictors influencing the use of public sector open data. A good understanding of these predictors affecting the acceptance and use of open data will likely assist policy makers and public administrations in determining the policy instruments that can increase the acceptance and use of open data through an active promotion campaign to engage-contribute-use.

Poverty and corruption are problems that developing countries fight everyday. Politicians andleaders abuse their influence to gain property and wealth by unacceptable means. Open data is away to challenge these problems and make a positive change in the society. Open data can be freely accessed, used, reused and re-distributed by anyone. Open development isabout providing the means for organizations to share open data. The process for open developmentin Uganda has just begun and there are many reasons to have an open development platform thatgathers open data, which the society demands when the government are not willing to share theirdata. The Uganda government denied invitation to join Open Government Partnership, that wouldmean a commitment to open development. This leaves non government organizations to take thefirst step to introduce open data to the society and other organizations. The Uganda OpenDevelopment Partnership Platform is an initiative by non government organizations that combinestheir knowledge to promote open development. The development of this platform has just begunand it needs further assistance to be ready for the public. The available data sets and documents onthe platform are released in proprietary formats, without the alternative of open formats. A portalfor open development that releases documents and data sets in proprietary formats alone aresomething that collides in the platform's purpose of being a portal for promoting openness. The purpose of this report is to promote open data with an overview about the subject and explainimprovement proposals on flaws in the Uganda Open Development Partnership Platform. Theinitiatives and organizations that practice open data can get initial guidelines from this report onhow to apply open data. The research should display the current state of the platform to identify theflaws and get an understanding how the platform works. The research was performed throughinterviews that were conducted in Kampala, Uganda, for three weeks in the beginning of 2013. Thisgave the chance to meet numerous citizens of this developing country which offered information ofinterest for the research. Observations were made by visiting the partners of the platform, in order tosee how they work with current means of visualization and to get an understanding of what can beimproved. The Uganda Open Development Partnership Platform can be improved with thepresented proposals to introduce the open license, multiple formats for material and structured datasets.