The master thesis deals with data quality in the context of open and linked data. One of the goals is to define specifics of data quality in this context. The specifics are perceived mainly with orientation to data quality dimensions (i. e. data characteristics which we study in data quality) and possibilities of their measurement. The thesis also defines the effect on data quality that is connected with data transformation to linked data; the effect if defined with consideration to possible risks and benefits that can influence data quality. The list of metrics verified on real data (open linked data published by government institution) is composed for the data quality dimensions that are considered to be relevant in context of open and linked data. The thesis points to the need of recognition of differences that are specific in this context when assessing and managing data quality. At the same time, it offers possibilities for further study of this question and it presents subsequent directions for both theoretical and practical evolution of the topic.

We propose an approach for supporting attribute exploration by web information retrieval, in particular by posing appropriate queries to search engines, crowd sourcing systems, and the linked open data cloud. We discuss underlying general assumptions for this to work and the degree to which these can be taken for granted.

The new wave of digital information requires archival institutions to develop new methods and e-services to handle the large amounts of digital information that is in their custody. Swedish Archival institutions have in accordance with the Public and Secrecy Act traditionally promoted the preservation and re-use of public information. The thesis investigates how the Swedish municipal archives are dealing with digital provision of their digital holdings to the public. At present, the Swedish Public Sector Information (PSI) directive places additional demands on them to make digital information available. This information is referred to as open data. This means that that they need to use digital tools to be able to do so. The study involved four Swedish municipal archival institutions, employed a qualitative research methodology and uses the case study method to gain a deeper insight of the phenomenon under study. It employed interviews as a data collecting technique. The results showed that to make digital infor-mation available it requires the implementation of an e-archive which consolidates and facilitates the management of information. The study results further showed that the PSI-directive is not fully understood by some of the interviewed archivists and some of the institutions also lack e-archives. In conclusion, the thesis analysis confirmed that the municipal archival institutions found it difficult to make their digital holdings available and to implement the PSI directive. This was due to organizational problems such as weak budgets, lack of high-quality data sources, knowledge and ambiguities in the PSI-directive. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archival Science.

Öppna geodata är idag (2016) ett ofta debatterat ämne och många aktörer i samhället får mer och mer intresse för frågan, i synnerhet i offentlig sektor. Även på riksnivå har politiker börjat verka för öppna geodata, där riksdagen nyligen har beslutat kring ett flertal motioner i frågan. Regeringen har dessutom uppdragit om studier om öppna geodata. Sverige ligger efter övriga nordiska länder, men även andra länder har kommit längre i utvecklingen mot öppna geodata. Idag arbetas mycket på området och myndigheten med ansvar för geodata i Sverige, Lantmäteriet, har börjat öppna datamängder, och fortsätter verka för vidare öppnanden. Detta kandidatexamensarbete har genomförts vid Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH, i samarbete med Agima Management AB. Arbetet syftar till att studera vilka möjligheter öppna geodata medför och vilka utmaningar en organisation ställs inför när organisationen ska öppna geodata. Genom en litteraturstudie kring olika åsikter, främst ifrån offentlig sektor, och intervjuer med personer verksamma inom geodataområdet sammanfattas dessa möjligheter och utmaningar med öppna geodata. Resultaten av arbetet visar att de främsta möjligheterna med öppna geodata är näringslivsutveckling och innovationskraft samt effektiviseringspotential i offentlig sektor. Vidare leder detta till positiva samhällsekonomiska effekter. De utmaningar en offentlig organisation ställs inför vid ett öppnande av geodata är framför allt finansieringen av geodata. Detta eftersom geodata idag delvis finansieras av avgifter från användare. I förlängningen finns utmaningar med att upprätthålla en hög kvalitet på geodata om geodata till exempel skulle skattefinansieras. Detta blir därför en ständig fråga för tjänstemän och politiker. Slutsatsen är att eftersom möjligheterna övervinner många av utmaningarna, då dessa inte är direkta nackdelar utan något som behöver lösas på ett annat sätt än idag, kan öppna geodata antas bli vanligare i Sverige på sikt. En av anledningarna till den relativt låga hastighet Sverige håller på området verkar vara att tjänstemän och politiker inte är på samma nivå i frågan idag. / Open geodata is today (2016) a highly debated topic and the interest for the matter is increasing, especially for the public sector. In the parliament, politicians have started to work for open geodata, where the parliament recently decided about several motions on the matter. Recently, there have also been assignments from the government about studying open geodata impacts. Sweden is behind the other Nordic countries and several other countries have evolved further towards open geodata as well. Today there is a lot of work on open geodata questions and the Swedish mapping, cadastral and land registration authority, Lantmäteriet, has started to open some of its data, and is aiming towards opening more. This Bachelor of Science thesis has been conducted at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in cooperation with Agima Management AB. The study aims towards describing the opportunities that open geodata brings, and the challenges that an organization faces when opening data. These opportunities and challenges are summarized through a literature review of different opinions, mostly from the public sector, and personal interviews with persons in the geodata field. The results show that the foremost opportunities with open geodata is in developing business and innovation as well as efficiency improvements in the public sector which leads to economic gains. The challenges a public organization faces when trying to open geodata is mainly financial. The financial issues come from the current model where fees from users are financing the operations. In extension, there will also be challenges with sustaining a high quality of geodata, which will be a constant question for officials and politicians if geodata, for example is financed by taxes. The conclusion is that since the opportunities overcome the challenges, as many of the challenges are not direct drawbacks, but rather something that has to be solved in a different way than it is today, open geodata may become more normal in Sweden eventually. One of the reasons for Sweden’s relatively low speed in the area seems to be that public officials and politicians are at different levels in the matter today.

Municipalities and government agencies are producers of information that may be of interest to the public concerning areas such as population statistics, weather data and policy decisions. In the Digital Agenda, the Swedish Government emphasizes the importance for data to be spread and promotes the development and innovation of new e-services created by other parties than government agencies. Various development initiatives of platforms have been taken around the world but there are no specific standards regarding how data should be made public. Softronic currently offer their customers a proprietary platform for the publication of open data. In order to improve or alternatively replace this, Softronic wanted an evaluation of a number of already existing platforms. This report contains an evaluation of the Softronic platform along with three other candidates: CKAN, Socrata and OpenDataSoft. The included aspects in the evaluation were selected based on requests from Softronic, covering among other things the installation process, performance and upgrades. To assess the API function of the platforms and demonstrate how an application using open data can be implemented, a graphical client was developed. Socrata received the highest score in the evaluation, followed by in turn OpenDataSoft, CKAN and Softronic. Socrata is recommended as a platform for publishing open government data mainly because it offered extensive functionality, required few technical skills and provided plenty of support services. / Kommuner och myndigheter är producenter av information som kan vara av intresse för allmänheten gällande exempelvis befolkningsstatistik, väderdata och politiska beslut. I den digitala agendan verkar Sveriges regering för att data ska spridas och främja utveckling och innovation av nya e-tjänster skapade av andra aktörer än myndigheter. Diverse utvecklingsinitiativ har tagits kring plattformar runtom i världen men det finns inga tydliga standarder kring hur data ska göras publikt. Softronic erbjuder idag sina kunder en egenutvecklad plattform för publiceringen av öppna data. För att kunna förbättra eller alternativt ersätta denna, ville Softronic ha en utvärdering av ett antal redan existerande plattformar. Denna rapport innehåller en utvärdering av Softronics plattform tillsammans med tre andra kandidater: CKAN, Socrata och OpenDataSoft. De aspekter som utvärderingen innefattar valdes utifrån önskemål från Softronic och täcker bland annat installationsförfarande, prestanda och uppgraderingar. För att undersöka API-funktionen hos plattformarna och demonstrera hur en applikation som använder sig av öppna data kan implementeras, utvecklades även en grafisk klient. Socrata fick högst poäng i utvärderingen, följt av i tur och ordning OpenDataSoft, CKAN och Softronic. Socrata rekommenderas som en plattform för publicering av öppna myndighetsdata främst eftersom den erbjöd omfattande funktionalitet, krävde få tekniska färdigheter och tillhandahöll många supporttjänster.

The importance that governments put into open government data policies has increased over the last decade. However, a decreasing speed in this trend is potentially ongoing due to the objectives of these policies not being perceived as completed. Therefore, locating the impacts and measuring their relative value generation aids the understanding of how these objectives can succeed. This study examines the impacts of open government data in Sweden and their potential value generation, focusing on the financial ones. In this study, we developed a measurement model that comprehends six different impacts that generate a value. These impacts are innovation for established firms, innovative start-ups, innovation for public institutions, anti-corruption, and democracy/civil participation. The study has used 24 semi-structured interview findings to develop the model using the grounded theory method. The model was then subsequentially tested and validated by conducting a survey.  We used PLS-SEM as a method of analysis of the 69 responses on the survey from Swedish experts in the field. The results show a positive influence on the open government data financial value generation in the Swedish context, originating from data-driven innovation in established firms. Adding to this, positive impacts on the social value generated from open government data originate from innovative start-ups and product innovation in public institutions. The social value generated was also found to influence the financial value generation. Overall, the results also confirmed that the measurement model assessed is suited for evaluating the value generation of open government data. Thus, the study contributes to policies by visualizing the potential impacts and values that specific policy decisions may yield. Besides, the study contributes to theory thanks to developing a measurement model that could be applied to different contexts. Finally, a unique method that combines model development, context understanding, and model testing is used in the research. This method is considered a contribution due to its potential to be applied to future case study research.

Current practices in study design and data analysis have led to low reproducibility and replicability of findings in fields such as psychology, medicine, biology, and economics. Because gifted education research relies on the same underlying statistical and sociological paradigms, it is likely that it too suffers from these problems. This article discusses the origin of the poor replicability and introduces a set of open science practices that can increase the rigor and trustworthiness of gifted education’s scientific findings: preregistration, open data and open materials, registered reports, and preprints. Readers are directed to Internet resources for facilitating open science. To model these practices, a pre peer-review preprint of this article is available at https://psyarxiv.com/nhuv3/.

Die MOSAiC-Expedition war die größte Polarexpedition, die je durchgeführt wurde. Mehr als ein Jahr driftete das Forschungsschiff Polarstern durch den Arktischen Ozean und erhob dabei unzählige Forschungsdaten. Die Umsetzung stellte große logistische und technische Herausforderungen. Gleichzeitig setzte das Projekt Meilensteine in der Digitalisierung der MOSAiC-Daten. Das vorhandene Datenrepositorim PANGEA wurde als Datenbasis für die Abspeicherung der erhobenen und gewonnenen Daten genutzt. Das Datenmanagement hatte ein frühestmögliches Teilen der Daten zum Ziel. Außerdem stand von Anfang an das Datenmanagement als ein Teil von open science und einer frühen Datenzitierbarkeit. Ab 2023 sollen alle MOSAiC-Daten im Repositorium frei verfügbar sein. MOSAiC ist der bisher größte Anwendungsfall für das Projekt Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI). / The MOSAiC expedition was the largest polar expedition ever conducted. For more than a year, the research vessel Polarstern drifted through the Arctic Ocean collecting countless research data. The implementation posed major logistical and technical challenges. At the same time, the project set milestones in the digitization of MOSAiC data. The existing data repositoryim PANGEA was used as a database for storing the collected and acquired data. Data management aimed at sharing the data as early as possible. In addition, from the beginning, data management stood as a part of open science and early data citability. Starting in 2023, all MOSAiC data should be freely available in the repository. MOSAiC is the largest use case to date for the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) project.

Making data openly accessible and how to utilize data are becoming increasingly clear in business development. Therefore, succeeding in it can allow a tremendous competitive advantage in the tourism market. The previous research has been lacking to show how tourism enterprises and regions can utilize open data in their favor. In this study, the implementation and the use of open data, and its interconnectedness to sustainable tourism development in Finland, are scrutinized. Visit Finland’s nationally launched open database is used as a case to examine the phenomenon. The study relies on qualitative methods using semi-structured interviews, interviewing tourism businesses, and regional tourism organizations, who meet the criteria of early adopters, following Rogers's diffusion of innovations theory. The study is to explore what both groups think of the advantages, disadvantages, facilitators, and hindrances of the implementation and the usage of the open database along with how they see its linkages to sustainable tourism development. The findings show that the overall perception of launching an open national database is affirmative. The significance of resource management, communication, and collaboration in succeeding in the implementation of the open database is highlighted in the results. The study shows that the diffusion of innovations is a fitting framework for understanding adaptation processes in terms of this kind of innovation. The linkages between open data and openness as a culture with sustainable development shall be made much more clearly, as they are linked; however, people do not often know how. The collaboration between tourism actors through organizational level management needs to be adequately navigated by increased awareness through communication. This way, the value of investing in open data can be perceived, and thus, the challenge of continuousness, which is a challenge of diffusion, can be overcome, and direct and indirect gains can be received by tourism stakeholders. The adaptation climate is favorable by accelerated competition in the global tourism market due to COV19, thereby urging tourism actors to take the digitalization leap. The study shows how all comes down to people and their management of change. Behind every technological appliance, there are people whose shoes must step in order to understand the diffusion.

Alors que plus de cinquante pays dans le monde ont entrepris une démarche d’ouverture des données publiques, la thèse enquête sur l’émergence et la mise en oeuvre des politiques d’open data. Elle repose sur l’analyse de sources publiques et sur une enquête ethnographique conduite dans sept collectivités locales et institutions françaises. Revenant sur six moments de définition de grands « principes » de l’open data et leur traduction en politique publique par une institution française, Etalab, ce travail montre comment la catégorisation par l’open data a porté l’attention sur les données, en particulier sous leur forme « brute », considérées comme une ressource inexploitée, le « nouveau pétrole » gisant sous les organisations. L’enquête montre que le processus de l’ouverture débute généralement par une phase d’identification marquée par des explorations progressives et incertaines. Elle permet de comprendre que l’identification constitue un geste d’instauration qui transforme progressivement les fichiers de gestion de l’administration en données. Leur mise en circulation provoque des frictions : pour sortir des réseaux sociotechniques de l’organisation, les données doivent généralement passer à travers des circuits de validation et des chaînes de traitement. Par ailleurs, les données doivent souvent subir d’importantes transformations avant leur ouverture pour devenir intelligibles à la fois par les machines et par les humains. Cette thèse montre enfin que l’instauration concerne aussi les publics dont il est attendu qu’ils visualisent, inspectent et exploitent les données ouvertes. L’instauration des publics par des instruments très divers constitue un autre pan du travail invisible des politiques d’open data. Il ressort enfin de cette thèse que l’obligation à l’ouverture des données publiques, une suite possible des politiques d’open data, pose de manière saillante une question fondamentale « qu’est-ce qu’une donnée ? » Plutôt que de réduire la donnée à une catégorie relative, qui s’appliquerait à toutes sortes de matériaux informationnels, les cas étudiés montrent qu’elle est généralement attribuée dès lors que les données sont le point de départ de réseauxsociotechniques dédiés à leur circulation, leur exploitation et leur mise en visibilité. / As more than fifty countries have launched an open data policy, this doctoral dissertation investigates on the emergence and implementation of such policies. It is based on the analysis of public sources and an ethnographic inquiry conducted in seven French local authorities and institutions. By retracing six moments of definitions of the “open data principles” and their implementation by a French institution, Etalab, this work shows how open data has brought attention to data, particularly in their raw form, considered as an untapped resource, the “new oil” lying under the organisations. The inquiry shows that the process of opening generally begins by a phase of identification marked by progressive and uncertain explorations. It allows to understand that data are progressively instantiated from management files into data. Their circulation provoke frictions: to leave the sociotechnical network of organisations, data generally go through validation circuits and chains of treatment. Besides, data must often undergo important treatments before their opening in order to become intelligible by machines as well as humans. This thesis shows eventually that data publics are also instantiated as they are expected to visualize, inspect and process the data. Data publics are instantiated through various tools, which compose another area of the invisible work of open data projects. Finally, it appears from this work that the possible legal requirement to open data asks a fundamental question, “what is data?” Instead of reducing data to a relational category, which would apply to any informational material, studied cases show that they generally are applied when data are a starting point of sociotechnical networks dedicated to their circulation, their exploitation and their visibility.