Risk Analysis to Overcome Barriers to Open Data

Despite the development of Open Data platforms, the wider deployment of Open Data still faces significant barriers. It requires identifying the obstacles that have prevented e-government bodies either from implementing an Open Data strategy or from ensuring its sustainability.This paper presents the results of a study carried out between June and November 2012, in which we analyzed three cases of Open Data development through their platforms, in a medium size city (Rennes, France), a large city (Berlin, Germany), and at national level (UK). It aims to draw a clear typology of challenges, risks, limitations, barriers, all terms used by the different stakeholders with diverse meanings and based on different motivations. Indeed the issues and constraints faced by re-users of public data differ from the ones encountered by the public data providers. Through the analysis of the experiences in opening data, we attempt to identify how barriers were overcome and how risks were managed. Beyond passionate debates in favor or against Open Data, we propose to consider the development of an Open Data initiative in terms of risks, contingency actions, and expected opportunities. We therefore present in the next sections the risks to Open Data organized in 7 categories: (1) governance, (2) economic issues, (3) licenses and legal frameworks, (4) data characteristics, (5) metadata, (6) access, and (7) skills. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]