Enabling an Open Data Ecosystem

Over the last decades, the interest in open data has increased dramatically in line with the improvements of information and communication technologies. Attention of institutions and private organizations focused on the value of the public sector information. Scholars and practitioners state that open data might have a huge impact in terms of efficiency within the public sector, social and economic wellbeing and might improve transparency and participation of people. While this is true, open data shows some issues that needs to be addressed. Among others, the most important are the technical quality of the published data and the sustainability over time of the whole ecosystem. Both issues are intertwined as actors providing services to the users need to both 1) assure that data is correct and 2) achieve economic sustainability. In such a market, an important role is growingly played by the enabler i.e. those actors that provide the technical infrastructure which allows for the sharing, linking and re-use of data. As the open data market is at its infancy, a survey of the market shows that such actors are very different in terms of nature and business models.