A proposed checklist for the technical maturity of open government data: an application on GCC countries

Abstract

Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives and more specifically OGD portals have increased rapidly worldwide since the late 2000's, including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. A comprehensive analysis of the capabilities and potential of these initiatives particularly for the GCC members from a technical perspective is currently missing from existing research literature. To address this gap, this paper aims at assessing the technical maturity of OGD Portals for each of the six countries of the GCC through investigating their services and characteristics. Our study results illustrate the current technical quality of the surveyed portals and spotlight the work that needs to be done to reach a full technical maturity in order to make public data truly open and readily available for citizens, researchers, and innovation in general.