Exploring the Emerging Impacts of Open Data in the Public Sector

Abstract

Open Government Data initiatives, and in particular open data portals, are being developed at the national, regional, local and international level. The increasing availability of open data affects the whole economy. Therefore, this paper explores the emerging impacts of these data in the public sector by using key aspects and attributes of existing e-government development indices. It extends the previously published models and evaluates the impacts of open data enabling factors and also generating mechanisms in the economic, educational, environmental, health, politics and legislation, social, and trade and business development. A method of partial least squares structural equation modelling is used to show the causal relationships between these areas. The results then suggest that the biggest impacts of open data can be found in the educational and social development, however, the attention of businesses is still lacking in this area.