Barriers to Using Open Government Data Jędrzej Wieczorkowski SGH Warsaw School of Economics Collegium of Economic Analysis al. Niepodległości 162 02-554 Warsaw, Poland +48 22 564 92 80 jedrzej.wieczorkowski@sgh.waw.pl ABSTRACT The article describes the issues of Open Government Data (OGD) and problems with the use of such data. Good quality and proper publishing of OGD enable (apart from the control function) their business use. This affects the economic benefits. The author has identified the main problems of data publication based on Central Repositories for Public Information (CRPI) in Poland, the USA, the UK and Germany. The article focuses on the maturity of data formats, automated processing with Application Programming Interface (API), using the concept of Linked Open Data (LOD). The aim of the article is to identify barriers to the implementation of OGD-based solutions and to indicate recommendations to overcome these barriers. The research shows that the methods of sharing OGD differ significantly between countries despite common guidelines. The main problem is the use of unstructured data, unsuitable for the use of LOD. CCS Concepts • Social and professional topics ➝ Computing / technology policy ➝ Government technology policy ➝ Governmental regulations • Applied computing ➝ Computers in other domains ➝ Computing in government ➝ E-government • Applied computing ➝ Document management and text processing ➝ Document preparation ➝ Format and notation Keywords Open Data; Open Government Data; OGD; Linked Data; Linked Open Data; LOD; Big Data; Central Repository for Public Information; CRPI; E-government. 1. INTRODUCTION Data is one of the fundamental wealth in the modern economy. More and more efficient processing of large data volumes (big data) requires not only appropriate algorithms and computing capabilities, but primarily, access to necessary data sources. The big data concept introduces new added values such as: access to large volumes of data in a real-time, gathering and processing unstructured data and (particularly relevant to this article) access to external data from open sources [23]. One of the basic sources of open data is Open Government Data (OGD). The importance of such data may be related on the one hand with transparency of government and participatory governance (the function of government controlling and citizen involvement in decision processes), and on the other hand, social and commercial values of data by creating innovative businesses and products [9]. There is an open debate on to what extent the information gathered by public institutions should be commonly accessible and to what degree legal regulations should allow to reuse the information generated from public funds [5]. The public sector including public administration financed from common funds, generates huge amounts of data that can be commercially used differently from the original purpose of their collection. Data can be important from a social and economic point of view, contributing to the development of the entire economy. Open data can be useful for the development of various sectors of the economy, including, for example, the sector of advanced e-services, which is located at a junction of public administration, entrepreneurs and citizens [20]. However, there are various barriers to the implementation of appropriate organizational and IT solutions and the practical use of OGD. The aim of the article is to identify barriers to the implementation of OGD-based solutions, and to indicate recommendations to overcome these barriers in the interest of the entire economy. The author has conducted research on the methods of providing such data and on existing standards and legal regulations. The paper is structured as follows: the section 2 presents the idea of data openness along with guidelines and formal requirements for their publication. The results of my research on repositories for public information are described in section 3. Next, the section 4 contains a discussion, especially on universal and specific to OGD and big data barriers to using open data. The paper concludes with the summarization of the most important findings and future research directions. 2. OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA CONCEPT The purpose of OGD is to publicize information resources created by or on the order of public administration, as well as the free use and distribution of open data by each citizen [13]. Opening up government data is a global trend that began with the launch of a repository data.gov in May 2009 by the USA government, followed by the UK and New Zealand [19]. There is an assumption that openness is the fundamental feature of e-government operating in the spirit of democracy of 21th century [1]. The principles of Open Government Data have been developed [12]. According to them data must be: complete, primary, timely, accessible, machine processable, non-discriminatory, non- proprietary, License-free. Public institutions should publish all data, unless it would violate security, privacy or other legitimate restrictions. Data should be published as collected at the source, Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. ICEEG 2019, June 18–21, 2019, Lyon, France © 2019 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6237-5/19/06…$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3340017.3340022