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Open data are characterized by a number of economic, environmental, technological, innovative, and social benefits. They are seen as a significant contributor to the city’s transformation into smart city. This is all the more so when the society is on the border of Society 5.0, that is, shift from the information society to a super smart society or society of imagination takes place. However, the question constantly asked by open data experts is, what are the key factors to be met and satisfied in order to achieve promised benefits? The current trend of openness suggests that the principle of openness should be followed not only by data but also research, education, software, standard, hardware, etc., it should become a philosophy to be followed at different levels, in different domains. This should ensure greater transparency, eliminating inequalities, promoting, and achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). Therefore, many agendas (sustainable development strategies, action plans) now have openness as a prerequisite. This chapter deals with concepts of open (government) data and Society 5.0 pointing to their common objectives, providing some success stories of open data use in smart cities or transformation of cities toward smart cities, mapping them to the features of the Society 5.0. We believe that this trend develops a new form of society, which we refer to as “open data-driven society.” It forms a bridge from Society 4.0 to Society 5.0. This chapter attempts to identify the role of openness in promoting human-centric smart society, smart city, and smart living.

With the continuous development of the global COVID-19 epidemic, mobile learning has become one of the most significant learning approaches. The mobile learning resource is the basis of mobile learning; it may directly affect the effectiveness of mobile learning. However, the current learning resources cannot meet users' needs. This study aims to analyze the influencing factors of accepting open data as learning resources among users.

Based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), this study proposed a comprehensive theoretical research model. Data were obtained from 398 postgraduates from several universities in central China. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine the reliability and validity of the measurement model. Data has been analyzed using SPSS and AMOS software.

The results suggested that perceived usefulness, performance expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions have a positive influence on accepting open data as learning resources. Perceived ease of use was not found significant. Moreover, it was further shown in the study that behavioural intention significantly influenced the acceptance of open data as learning resources.

There is a lack of research on open data as learning resources in developing countries, especially in China. This study addresses the gap and helps us understand the acceptance of open data as learning resources in higher education. This study also pays attention to postgraduates' choice of learning resources, which has been little noticed before. Additionally, this study offers opportunities for further studies on the continuous usage of open data in higher education.

Open data initiatives represent a critical pillar of smart cities’ strategies but remain insufficiently and poorly understood. This paper aims to advance a conceptualization of citizen participation and investigates its effect on open data use at the municipal level.

Based on 14 semi-structured interviews with citizens involved in open data projects within the city of Montréal (Canada), the paper develops a research model linking the multidimensional construct of citizen participation with initial use of open data in municipalities.

The study shows that citizen participation is a key contributor to the use of open data through four distinct categories of participation, namely, hands-on activities, greater responsibility, better communication and improved relations between citizens and the open data portal development team. While electronic government research often views open data implementation as a top-down project, the current study demonstrates that citizens are central to the success of open data initiatives and shows how their role can be effectively leveraged across various dimensions of participation.

This paper proposes a conceptualization of citizen participation on open data use at the municipal level. Citizen participation is a found to be a key contributor to the use of open data through four distinct categories of participation, namely, hands-on activities, greater responsibility, better communication and improved relations between citizens and the open data portal development team. This paper demonstrates the critical role of citizen participation in open government.

This paper aims to investigate which organizational measures can facilitate the use of open data. Implementation of open government data initiatives is commonly supply-driven, as it is difficult to predict the possible uses and users of data. Nonetheless, the value of open data materializes only upon its use – either to achieve societal benefits or economic value.

First, a list of organizational measures to facilitate open data use from the literature is collated. Then, four case studies to examine the challenges faced in practice when implementing them are carried out. The case sample includes two types of organizations (statistical agency and municipality) in two country settings (Sweden and The Netherlands).

Public organizations find it challenging to set up support for open data users having various requirements and skills. Most public organizations have no or limited interaction with data users and are often selective with regards to with whom and how to communicate.

Given the fragmented and emerging state of research on open data use and engagement, to date no systematic framework existed which would be dedicated to user engagement strategies. The authors systematized the literature and identified the themes pertaining to this issue. Their contribution is a list of measures for public organizations to improve open data use.

An important deliverable of this research is the list of possible organizational measures, which can be used by public managers to plan their open data engagement strategies. The authors suggest that data publishers adopt a problem-oriented approach for selecting which data to publish and put more efforts into stimulating stakeholder participation.

The novelty of this study lies in the fact that it addresses a previously overlooked area of open data research, namely, the use of open data and ways to stimulate it.

Open government data (OGD) are considered as a technology capable of promoting transparency openness, and accountability, which in turn has a positive impact on innovation activities and creates responsive government, collaboration, cooperation, co-creation and participation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of OGD and open data portals among students, in an attempt to discover how governments can improve their actions in this respect.

This study develops a behavioural intention-based analysis using constructs from the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, which is supplemented with additional constructs that meet the purpose of the study. In total, ten constructs divided into 33 items constituted the input for our study. Input data for the developed model have been collected through a structured questionnaire distributed between bachelor's and master's level students in three countries – the Czech Republic, India and Latvia. A structural equation modelling technique was used to analyse the relationships between variables of the model and test the nine hypothesis defined.

Six constructs have been identified to facilitate significant relationships with behavioural intention. The analysis of the results of the three countries allows us to draw more objective conclusions in respect to the aim of the study and to reveal country-specific aspects that need to be addressed in the future.

This study adds to the existing literature few theoretical and practical aspects. It highlights the role of open data portals as a central point of OGD infrastructures. It enables governments to understand the relationships among the related constructs, improving their actions and modifying their data infrastructures accordingly.

The aim of the article is to investigate what characterizes the information constructs that the archival discourse and the open data discourse communicate in text, and what their similarities and differences are. This article proposes that it is possible to see the open data initiative and modern archival practice as two discourses that have used different terminology to express and communicate their messages in the literature. In this article, we have applied a hypothesis-like assumption that the information constructs used in open data are actually nothing other than records, as they are in the archival discourse.

This article is based on a mixed method approach. A quantitative text analysis (word count) was carried out in a large set of documents representing the open data discourse and in the archival discourse. This was followed by a qualitative text analysis.

It was found that both discourses did focus on records. However, the opendata discourse very seldom used the term record, but used information and data much more frequently. The archival discourse used the term information almost as often as record. A possible adaption of communication strategies can be identified, targeting a much wider audience through a user-centered approach. This could be an indication of a change in the archival discourse, which seems to be moving from a discourse that is very much regulated by law toward a discourse that is more focused on benefit and usability.

This research indicates that it is possible to interpret both the open data and the archival discourse as one united discourse, an effect derived from working with e-government. There is an ongoing harmonization of the words used, and in the studied archival discourse, a more user- and business-oriented focus can be seen.

This paper aims to examine the nature and sufficiency of descriptive information included in open datasets and the nature of comments and questions users write in relation to specific datasets. Open datasets are provided to facilitate civic engagement and government transparency. However, making the data available does not guarantee usage. This paper examined the nature of context-related information provided together with the datasets and identified the challenges users encounter while using the resources.

The authors extracted descriptive text provided together with (often at the top of) datasets (N = 216) and the nature of questions and comments users post in relation to the dataset. They then segmented text descriptions and user comments into “idea units” and applied open-coding with constant comparison method. This allowed them to come up with thematic issues that descriptions focus on and the challenges users encounter.

Results of the analysis revealed that context-related descriptions are limited and normative. Users are expected to figure out how to use the data. Analysis of user comments/questions revealed four areas of challenge they encounter: organization and accessibility of the data, clarity and completeness, usefulness and accuracy and language (spelling and grammar). Data providers can do more to address these issues.

The purpose of the study is to understand the nature of open data provision and suggest ways of making open data more accessible to “non expert users”. As such, it is not focused on generalizing about open data provision in various countries as such provision may be different based on jurisdiction.

The study provides insight about ways of organizing open dataset that the resource can be accessible by the general public. It also provides suggestions about how open data providers could consider users' perspectives including providing continuous support.

Research on open data often focuses on technological, policy and political perspectives. Arguably, this is the first study on analysis of context-related information in open-datasets. Datasets do not “speak for themselves” because they require context for analysis and interpretation. Understanding the nature of context-related information in open dataset is original idea.

Existing overviews of barriers for openly sharing and using government data are often conceptual or based on a limited number of cases. Furthermore, it is unclear what categories of barriers are most obstructive for attaining open data objectives. This paper aims to categorize and prioritize barriers for openly sharing and using government data based on many existing Open Government Data Initiatives (OGDIs).

This study analyzes 171 survey responses concerning existing OGDIs worldwide.

The authors found that the most critical OGDI barrier categories concern (in order of most to least critical): functionality and support; inclusiveness; economy, policy and process; data interpretation; data quality and resources; legislation and access; and sustainability. Policymakers should prioritize solving functionality and support barriers and inclusiveness barriers because the authors found that these are the most obstructive in attaining OGDI objectives.

The prioritization of open data barriers calls for three main actions by practitioners to reduce the barrier impact: open data portal developers should develop advanced tools to support data search, analysis, visualization, interpretation and interaction; open data experts and teachers should train potential users, and especially those currently excluded from OGDIs because of a lack of digital skills; and government agencies that provide open data should put user-centered design and the user experience central to better support open data users.

This study contributes to the open data literature by proposing a new, empirically based barrier categorization and prioritization based a large number of existing OGDIs.

Citizen engagement is key to the success of many Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives. However, not much is known regarding how this type of engagement emerges. This study aims to investigate the necessary conditions for the emergence of citizen-led engagement with OGD and to identify which factors stimulate this type of engagement.

First, the authors created a systematic overview of the literature to develop a conceptual model of conditions and factors of OGD citizen engagement at the societal, organizational and individual level. Second, the authors used the conceptual model to systematically study citizens’ engagement in the case of a particular OGD initiative, namely, the digitization of presidential election results data in Indonesia in 2014. The authors used multiple information sources, including interviews and documents, to explore the conditions and factors of OGD citizen-led engagement in this case.

From the literature the authors identified five conditions for the emergence of OGD citizen-led engagement as follows: the availability of a legal and political framework that grants a mandate to open up government data, sufficient budgetary resources allocated for OGD provision, the availability of OGD feedback mechanisms, citizens’ perceived ease of engagement and motivated citizens. In the literature, the authors found six factors contributing to OGD engagement as follows: democratic culture, the availability of supporting institutional arrangements, the technical factors of OGD provision, the availability of citizens’ resources, the influence of social relationships and citizens’ perceived data quality. Some of these conditions and factors were found to be less important in the studied case, namely, citizens’ perceived ease of engagement and citizens’ perceived data quality. Moreover, the authors found several new conditions that were not mentioned in the studied literature, namely, citizens’ sense of urgency, competition among citizen-led OGD engagement initiatives, the diversity of citizens’ skills and capabilities and the intensive use of social media. The difference between the conditions and factors that played an important role in the case and those derived from the literature review might be because of the type of OGD engagement that the authors studied, namely, citizen-led engagement, without any government involvement.

The findings are derived using a single case study approach. Future research can investigate multiple cases and compare the conditions and factors for citizen-led engagement with OGD in different contexts.

The conditions and factors for citizen-led engagement with OGD have been evaluated in practice and discussed with public managers and practitioners through interviews. Governmental organizations should prioritize and stimulate those conditions and factors that enhance OGD citizen engagement to create more value with OGD.

While some research on government-led engagement with OGD exists, there is hardly any research on citizen-led engagement with OGD. This study is the first to develop a conceptual model of necessary conditions and factors for citizen engagement with OGD. Furthermore, the authors applied the developed multilevel conceptual model to a case study and gathered empirical evidence of OGD engagement and its contributions to solving societal problems, rather than staying at the conceptual level. This research can be used to investigate citizen engagement with OGD in other cases and offers possibilities for systematic cross-case lesson-drawing.

In this paper, the authors compare the open government data (OGD) ecosystems of Mexico, Russia and the USA in an effort to extract some of the major points of similarity and differentiation between these countries and to trace how variations in these ecosystems may be related to context-specific historical problems and politics, particularly with regard to the possibility of sustained and institutionalized practice.

The authors take a comparative approach, using a set of concepts commonly applied to the three countries to analyze similarities and differences within this group. The authors gathered textual data and information, the searches for relevant documents guided by a set of concepts or criteria that are frequently used in studies of government’s open data readiness assessment.

The authors conclude by focusing on the very different national exigencies that have given rise to open data ecosystems in the three countries, the variations in policy vehicles and implementation schemes that have instantiated open data practices within the three ecosystems and the common challenges that each country faces in institutionalizing OGD programs beyond the tenures of their current executives.

OGD is an information policy with near global relevance and increasing application. Practitioners and scholars alike have used the concept of an “ecosystem” to guide their approach to implementing this policy and to theorizing its scope and benefits. The international comparison is original and adds to the current understanding of an ecosystem approach to OGD.