Unlocking the value of open data with a process-based information platform

Abstract

There has been a wide shift in the way data are managed in the public administration. The move has led to an increased adoption of the Open Data model, where public administrations freely and openly publish data gathered using citizen taxes. However, undesirable side effects include the lack of data quality, incompatible formats and access methods, and various semantic interpretations of data. As a consequence, Open Data stakeholders, such as application developers, common citizens and even government agencies themselves, are overwhelmed by the large quantity of unstructured data, unable offer citizens and business value-added applications and services. To address the issue and make Open Data actionable, this paper proposes a systematic value-creation process that helps stakeholders identify the most suitable information assets and convert them into forms that can be more consumable by users. The process is enabled by the Middleware for Open-Data Aggregation (MODA), a platform designed with four main features, i) data quality assessment, ii) data homogenization for uniform access through an universal interface, iii) data correlation and semantic adaptation, and iv) secure data access. These features maximize the return on investment in Open Data by reducing time and cost of third party application development while providing improvement feedback to data sources. © 2013 IEEE.