Information Polity

Mellouli, Sehl ; Luna-Reyes, Luis F. ; Zhang, Jing

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140334

Bertot, John Carlo ; Gorham, Ursula ; Jaeger, Paul T. ; Sarin, Lindsay C. ; Choi, Heeyoon

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140328

The transformative promises and potential of Big and Open Data are substantial for e-government services, openness and transparency, governments, and the interaction between governments, citizens, and the business sector. From "smart" government to transformational government, Big and Open Data can foster collaboration; create real-time solutions to challenges in agriculture, health, transportation, and more; promote greater openness; and usher in a new era of policy- and decision-making. There are, however, a range of policy challenges to address regarding Big and Open Data, including access and dissemination; digital asset management, archiving and preservation; privacy; and security. After presenting a discussion of the open data policies that serve as a foundation for Big Data initiatives, this paper examines the ways in which the current information policy framework fails to address a number of these policy challenges. It then offers recommendations intended to serve as a beginning point for a revised policy framework to address significant issues raised by the U.S. government's engagement in Big Data efforts.

Zuiderwijk, Anneke ; Janssen, Marijn ; Davis, Chris

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140329

Open data ecosystems are expected to bring many advantages, such as stimulating citizen participation and innovation. However, scant attention has been given to what constitutes an open data ecosystem. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of essential elements of open data ecosystems for enabling easy publication and use of open data. To achieve this objective, the literature has been reviewed and a scenario about the publication and use of open data has been analyzed. It was found that various applications, tools and portals are available which together can form an ecosystem. The best functionalities of this ecosystem can be selected and utilized by open data providers and users. To create an open data ecosystem at least four key elements should be captured, namely, 1) releasing and publishing open data on the internet, 2) searching, finding, evaluating and viewing data and their related licenses, 3) cleansing, analyzing, enriching, combining, linking and visualizing data and 4) interpreting and discussing data and providing feedback to the data provider and other stakeholders. Furthermore, to integrate the ecosystem elements and to let them act as an integrated whole, there should be three additional elements 5) user pathways showing directions for how open data can be used, 6) a quality management system and 7) different types of metadata to be able to connect the elements.

Kavanaugh, Andrea ; Krishnan, Siddarth ; Pérez-Quiñones, Manuel ; Tedesco, John ; Madondo, Kumbirai ; Ahuja, Ankit

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140332

Traditional sources of information for small and rural communities have been disappearing over the past decade. A lot of the information and discussion related to such areas is now scattered across websites of numerous local organizations, individual blogs, social media and other user-generated media (YouTube, Flickr). To facilitate citizen engagement and social interaction it is important to capture this information and make it easily accessible. A system with location-based support can provide local citizens with an engaging way to interact with information and identify the local issues most relevant to them, such as a road construction site. We created an information aggregator, called the Virtual Town Square (VTS), to support and facilitate local discussion. It supports a location-based interface for users to access the information collected. In this paper, we discuss focus group interviews with local citizens that motivated our design of a system to facilitate civic participation. We then discuss the unique design challenges of a local news aggregator and our design approach to create a local information ecosystem. We also describe the initial evaluation and feedback we received from local users. We close the paper with a discussion of future changes to VTS to address its initial limitations.

Doran, Marie-Andree ; Daniel, Sylvie

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140330

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) revolutionize the ways different urban actors communicate and interact. Geographic information technologies are of key importance too for the deployment and implementation of ICTs in the Smart City, because of the central role they may play as decision-making support tools. Indeed, they give quick access to different layers of information that may be combined and integrated to facilitate analysis of a situation and make the best decisions. However, such a central role is rarely acknowledged. In this paper, we propose to define the extent of the concept of Smart Cities and some of the distinctive features that it should display to support its sustainability. We will then propose an overview of the current and forthcoming developments in the geospatial domain to illustrate the opportunities that may arise for Smart City initiatives. The paper will also discuss the issues and challenges that need to be addressed when considering these emerging geomatics-driven solutions in the context of Smart City.

Graves, Alvaro ; Hendler, James

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140333

In the last years, many government organizations have implemented Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives. The data published describe a broad set of areas, including environment, budget and education among others. While these initiatives often report anecdotal success regarding improved efficiency and governmental savings, the potential applications of OGD remain a largely uncharted territory. In this paper, we claim that there is an important group of people interested in OGD -e.g., journalists and activists- who could benefit from the use of OGD, but who cannot do so because they cannot perform the essential operations needed to collect, process, merge, and make sense of the data. The reasons behind these problems are multiple, the most critical one being a fundamental lack of expertise and technical knowledge related to data management and visualizations. We propose the use of visualizations as a way to alleviate this situation. Visualizations provide a simple mechanism to understand and communicate large amounts of data. We also show evidence that there is a need for exploratory mechanisms to navigate the data and metadata in these visualizations. Finally, we provide a discussion on a set of features that tools should have in order to facilitate the creation of visualizations by users. We briefly present the implementation of these features in a new tool prototype focused on simplifying the creation of visualization based on Open Data.

Taylor, J.A.;

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140335

Douglass, Kimberly

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140323

This research borrows materials from analytical models, such as Government Information Valuation (GIV) models, to construct new methodological tools to study e-governance. The new tools developed here will help scholars better represent the spectrum of e-governance stakeholders and their information (and data) needs. The particular information needs that contextualize this research are those of marginalized communities who are confronted with quality of life issues, such as environmental injustice. First, however, this research critically analyzes the assumptions that shape the scholarship. Current methodological approaches reflect e-governance scholars' unacknowledged use of procedural rights of democracy as conceptual guides. Since these approaches limit attention to social welfare and quality of life goals, the e-governance literature largely homogenizes stakeholders, their political interests, and their disparate information needs.

Meijer, Albert ; Grimmelikhuijsen, Stephan ; Nell, Louise ; Lentz, Leo

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140325

Disclosure of information is an increasingly popular policy instrument. While the use of disclosed information by consumers has been studied, little is known the disclosure practices of organizations. The central question in this paper is: how do organizations translate the trade-off between legal and communicative quality into an organizational arrangement for the production of client communication products? Scholars suggest that the translation of this trade-off into organizational practices is influenced by the perception of the regulatory environment. We present an empirical study of 24 pension funds in the Netherlands to investigate this issue. Our findings falsify the expected relations between perceptions of the environment and organizational arrangements for client communication practices. Instead, this study highlights that a hybrid organizational arrangement for communicating with clients is the modus operandi for most organizations as it is an attractive way of integrating both legal and communicative expertise.

Barry, Emily ; Bannister, Frank

2014 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-140327

The pressure for governments to release much of the vast reservoir of data that they collectively hold continues to grow. This pressure is grounded not just in principles such as the right of the public to know or freedom of information, but in beliefs about the economic, social, administrative and political benefits that will flow from the wide availability of such data. However it is also acknowledged that there is a considerable gap between such expectations and current realities one component of which is the many barriers to open data release. This paper examines these barriers from the perspective of senior managers in Irish central and local government. A taxonomy of such barriers is proposed and compared with other classifications of barriers in the literature. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications for the opening up of government data.