Towards enrichment of the open government data: a stakeholder-centered determination of High-Value Data sets for Latvia

Abstract

Open Government Data (OGD) are seen as one of the trends that can potentially benefit the economy. However, this fact is closely linked to the “value” of the OGD, i.e. the extent to which the data provided by the OGD portals are interesting, useful and valuable for their reuse, creating value for society and the economy. Here, the concept of “high-value datasets” comes, pointing to data that would create highest value to society and economy. Although an agreement in PSI directive has been reached on a list of six universal categories to be considered as high-value data sets, they are quite generic, i.e. consistent with the current world trends. While it is planned that a list of specific data sets will be defined in 2021, it is also known that this is a country-specific question where the nature of the specific data sets, which are considered to be of high value, depends on country-specific aspects and should therefore be determined by the countries themselves. This study is a first step in this direction by conducting a survey of individual users and small and medium-sized businesses (SME) of Latvia on their view regarding the current state of the data, i.e. in which extent they meet their needs, and what data might be useful for them, and how their availability would affect their willingness to use these data. The paper provides some first insights into the findings on how users assess the current overall value of available OGD, what data sets would give them or their businesses greater value, and how this would affect their willingness to use OGD in the future if these data would become available.