“Open Government Data” - based Business Models
A Market Consultation on the Relationship with Government in the Case of
Mobility and Route-Planning Applications
Nils Walravens
1
, Mathias Van Compernolle
2
, Pieter Colpaert
3
, Pieter Ballon
1
, Peter Mechant
2
and Erik Mannens
3
1
iMinds-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 9, Brussels, Belgium
2
iMinds-MICT, Ghent University, Korte Meer 11, Ghent, Belgium
3
iMinds-Data Science Lab, Ghent University, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, Ghent, Belgium
Keywords: Open Data, Business Models, Mobility, Route-planning, Government.
Abstract: This paper explores the business potential of open government data in the domain of mobility. Open data is
often touted as the go-to policy for government to pursue, but the actual returns of following such a strategy
remain somewhat illusive and anecdotic. Based on a research project subsidised by the Flemish Department
of Mobility and Public Works, this paper presents the results of a market consultation with diverse
stakeholders. The goal is to better understand the attitudes, bottlenecks, expectations and requirements
related to open data of market stakeholders, so that the government can devise strategies that support
sustainable open data initiatives and its policy goals at the same time. The paper offers a framework towards
analysing this. It concludes that structural and iterative dialogue is desirable, both from the perspective of
the market and government, but that this perhaps obvious key component is often overlooked.
1 INTRODUCTION
An aspect that is deemed of particular importance to
‘smarter’ forms of governance is open data
(Schaffers et al., 2012; Townsend, 2013). The idea is
that governments are currently ‘sitting’ on a wealth
of information related to divergent aspects of life in
the city, but that this data is neither publicly
available, nor easily interpretable. This has sparked a
movement to encourage the opening of datasets in a
structured and machine-readable way, under the
‘open data’ moniker, which has gained significant
traction across local and national governments. The
Open Knowledge Foundation is one of the strong
proponents of open data and has come up with what
has become the generally accepted definition of
open data: “Open means anyone can freely access,
use, modify and share for any purpose (subject, at
most, to requirements that preserve provenance and
openness)” (OKFN, 2015).
This means that open data can be used for any
goal at no cost, with the only (potential) exceptions
being that reusers mention the source of the data or
do not in any way prevent the data from being
shared further on.
Open data has proven to be in high demand in
some specific domains, with mobility often being
one of the first application areas under consideration
(see for example Jäppinen et al., 2013). The idea
here is clear: (semi-)public transport organisations
open up all kinds of data related to their operations
and networks, with the goal of having external
developers create new services and applications
(‘apps’) based on this data. In principle, this can
mean a cost reduction for the mobility organisations
that open data, as they do not need to build and
maintain their own services and apps, an activity that
is generally accepted as being highly cost-intensive
(Walravens, 2015). The benefit for citizens and users
of the (public) transport systems is that a multitude
of different mobility services become available,
which appeals to different target audiences and
niches.
In practice however, a number of challenges
remain and ‘merely’ opening up data has not always
proven equally successful (see e.g. Peled, 2011; Lee
et al., 2014). Opening up data already entails
64
Walravens, N., Compernolle, M., Colpaert, P., Ballon, P., Mechant, P. and Mannens, E.
“Open Government Data” - based Business Models - A Market Consultation on the Relationship with Government in the Case of Mobility and Route-Planning Applications.
DOI: 10.5220/0005948300640071
In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications (ICETE 2016) - Volume 2: ICE-B, pages 64-71
ISBN: 978-989-758-196-0
Copyright
c
2016 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
significant challenges to governments and public
organisations before any data “leaves” the
organisation (e.g. setting up internal processes to
safeguard internal data hygiene and quality control,
or implementing new or updating existing database
systems). Relevant data can also be distributed over
different government organisations or levels of
governance, and some data applicable to the public
may be under the control of private players that are
less inclined to open it. After data are made
available, the role of government is not necessarily
played out. Ensuring that data is actually reused and
relevant applications are built should also be
considered a concern for these public organisations
and open data policy makers. What the role of
government can be in supporting the reuse of open
mobility data is the main guiding question for the
work presented in this paper.
This research was part of a project carried out for
the Department of Mobility and Public Works
(http://departement-mow.vlaanderen.be) of the
Flemish Government in Belgium. This large and
complex department consists of eleven divisions that
are responsible for diverse aspects of mobility,
transport, traffic safety, road- and waterway
infrastructure and so on. Faced with the increasing
importance of open data on the regional, national
and European level (i.e., through the PSI-directive,
Janssen, 2011), the Department commissioned a
study that would investigate and tackle the
challenges related to implementing an open data
vision. A crucial part of this project was to better
understand needs and concerns that are present in
the market related to open data, as well as to their
relationship with the government. What follows are
the findings of a limited market consultation with
potential open mobility data reusers, with the goal of
identifying their needs and concerns. First, an
overview of challenges in open data business models
and reuse is provided. Next the methodology used is
presented, followed by the results of the analysis.
2 ON OPEN DATA BUSINESS
MODELS
This section will provide some considerations on
open data-related business models. Although reality
is often far more complex, this discussion starts on
the basis of a basic value chain depiction of the
process of open data reuse. Why and how this
process is far less linear in reality will be explained
further on. This ‘value chain of open government
data reuse’ starts with the creation of the data by a
public authority and ends with the consumption of a
service or product that is at least in part built on top
of that data. This basic chain is depicted in Figure 1
(Adapted from Ferro & Osella, 2013). The products
of each step in the chain are indicated at the top of
the chain, while the potential reusers of those
products are listed below it.
Figure 1: Open data value chain.
The first step in the chain is the creation of the
data, which in this scenario happens exclusively
within government. Clearly, data is also generated in
the private sector and in civil society, but given the
focus of this study, we will concentrate on open
government data. The result of this first step is raw
data. One can continue to process this data, for
example by categorizing it, indexing it and making it
searchable, opening it up in certain formats and so
on. These processes can be executed by non-profit or
commercial third-party players. The result of the
step is enriched data that is more suitable for reuse.
Although it is often forgotten, the moment in which
data are created is an ideal time to generate as much
(contextual) metadata as possible, making this
enrichment easier, cheaper and higher in quality. At
the moment of data creation, chances are higher that
a lot of metadata and information about the data is
available. We will return to this point later on. The
next step in this chain is the reuse of the data, which
for example can be done by civil society or citizens’
initiatives or by commercial parties that either do or
do not make it the core of their business model. The
results of this step are new products and services that
can be consumed by governments, citizens,
companies or other end users.
Although this figure and this value chain clearly
represent the basic principles of open data reuse and
their potential commercial opportunities, it remains a
conceptual representation of reality. Often, reality
consists of a much more complex set of interactions
that make it much less obvious to arrive at
successful open data reuse. For example, within
government, step one and two will often be closely
“Open Government Data” - based Business Models - A Market Consultation on the Relationship with Government in the Case of Mobility
and Route-Planning Applications
65
interlinked given that even internal government
organisations rarely work with true raw data (as
became apparent from several of our interviews
within the Department of Mobility and Public
Works). More often than not, data will be
documented in different ways, stored in different
systems in divergent formats, made available
through different channels and so on. While this
does not per se has to be a problem, it can impact the
way in which the next steps in the chain represented
above can be taken. When one moves to a next step
in the chain, the figure does not represent that
government itself can also be a reuser of this
enriched or more refined data (e.g., a different
government service or department or in the case of
intergovernmental data exchange). This could for
example happen when reports need to be made or
the government’s own data needs to be
contextualised.
In fact, the results of each step in this chain are
new data that can, in turn, be useful to all the
previous steps; a so-called feedback channel.
Indexing and storing raw data can teach one
something about the way data is captured and
initially spread. As such, the reuse of data can teach
one something about the quality of the metadata
from step two, but also something about missing
data that was not captured in step one, but may be
useful for reuse after all. The consumption of
services and products that are based on the opened
data, in a similar way provide new insights into each
of the previous steps. The difference is that with
each step taken, it becomes more complex to find
out where something may have gone wrong. That is
why it is crucial to first ensure the internal processes
are in place that can deal with this complexity,
before considering opening up. Adding detailed
provenance metadata at the moment of data creation
of course also alleviates many of these concerns.
In this context, it is important to consider that
there is not only business potential in steps three or
four of the chain, but also in steps one and two,
including for government. Where the principles of
open data mainly foresee that data are made
available for free and for everyone, this is not per se
the case for services that are based on raw data.
Without wanting to end up in a semantic debate, one
could argue that as soon as data is stored, indexed,
catalogued and made searchable in a graphical user
interface (e.g., a low threshold website that puts
GIS-information on a map), this can be considered a
service for which also government can ask a
financial compensation. How to deal with these
types of models from a government perspective will
be an important question for local and national
governments going forward.
Finally, what the open data value chain does not
capture is the motivation to start publishing open
data and how new services and products are
consumed. Often, reference is made to apps that will
be built based on top of open data, purely because
certain data sets are made available. In fact, it takes
much more than only open data to put innovative
services into the market.
First and foremost, data need to be made
available in a format that is usable. Next, there needs
to be a clear demand, which can be identified for
example by market analysis. Finally, a minimum of
incentive is required in order to stimulate developers
to get to work with open data. This final aspect
contains a lot of complexity: this incentive can
include financial compensation, media attention,
networking opportunities, expertise gain, peer
recognition and so on. Additionally, each of these
aspects can be responded to in very diverse ways.
The market could be stimulated through financial
support, but this would only be recommended when
other incentives have failed or the government
envisions a specific type of reuse that is not
manifesting in the market. Competitions and
hackathons may have their purpose, but only if
expectations are managed and goals are clearly
defined.
The goal of this research then, is to better
understand the concerns the market has related to the
reuse of open data and what the role of the
government can and should be in this regard. To
answer this question, an interview round was set up
with potential open mobility data reusers. The
following will explain the methodology used and the
results from the interviews.
3 METHODOLOGY
This section briefly details the applied methodology
(expert interviews), the sampling method and the
analysis framework that was used.
3.1 Expert Interviews
Expert interviews can be structured, semi-structured
or open ended (Schmidt, 2004) with the first usually
employed within survey research and the latter in
more explorative stages of research. Semi-structured
interviews allow for more flexibility in which topic
lists do not need to be rigorously followed and can
be modified depending on the expertise or the issues
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66
raised during the conversation (Rathbun, 2008: p.
698). Semi-structured interviews allow us to
approach the problem from within the context of the
research subject and reveal both factual knowledge
as well as the opinions of the interviewees, thus
providing more insight into the various angles to the
research questions. Of course, the data collection is
dependent on the will of the interviewee and the
circumstances in which the interview takes place
(such as location, time limitations etc.) can have an
influence (Rathbun, 2008). However, this method
was most appropriate to gather more insight into the
benefits and challenges related to open data reuse.
The following section will briefly detail how the
market players were selected.
3.2 Purposeful Sampling
In order to gather a diversity of inputs from the
stakeholder interviews, a purposeful sampling
(Patton, 1990) was conducted: “Purposeful sampling
involves studying information-rich cases in depth
and detail. The focus is on understanding and
illuminating important cases rather than on
generalizing from a sample to a population. […]
Rigor in case selection involves explicitly and
thoughtfully picking cases that are congruent with
the study purpose and that will yield data on major
study questions.” (Patton, 1999: p. 1197). Our
selection was based on crucial differences between
the companies, which make them more interesting
for comparison. These differences were related to
the market player being national or international,
large or small, active in the mobility domain or not,
and being B2C or B2B. In agreement with the
Department that subsidised this research, 7
companies were withheld (see Table 1).
Table 1: Companies and interviewees.
Company Title
Prophets Technical Director
Prophets Creative Technologist
Ally Business Developer
Be-Mobile Chief Traffic
FlowPilots Partner
Google Maps Strategic Partner Manager Geo
InfoFarm Data Scientist
Prophets is a Belgian mid-sized app developer
and advertising agency that has expressed interest in
mobility as a domain. Ally is a German startup that
offers a multimodal route-planning app that uses
open data from international cities and is active in
Flanders. Be-Mobile is a Belgian company that
offers traffic solutions on an international scale.
FlowPilots is a smaller developer that has
participated to EU-funded research projects in the
mobility domain, but has no commercial mobility
apps. InfoFarm is a B2B company that specialises in
data science and analysis. Finally Google Maps was
also interviewed, perhaps the best-known and most-
used multimodal route-planning application. All
interviews lasted about one hour and were structured
in the same manner.
3.3 Interview Matrix and Topic List
When dealing with expert interviews, each interview
does not need to be completely transcribed and a
general topic list was composed, which was adapted
depending on the interviewee and the operations of
their organisation. In order to analyse the interviews
in a structured way, an interview matrix was used.
This matrix uses five key aspects of working with
open data that were discussed during the interview,
and places them against the three perspectives that
were followed throughout the research: internal to
the company, external to the company (e.g., in
relation to government) and technical (see Table 2).
Table 2: Interview Matrix.
Internal External Technical
Attitude
Bottlenecks
Expectations
Requirements
Business
Sustainability
This matrix was used to structure the interviews
and the topic list and discusses various viewpoints
on open data reuse challenges from different
perspectives. The themes used in the table were
decided upon with the steering committee of the
project and based on key points from the analysis
presented in Section 2 of this paper. ‘Attitude’ refers
to the general position the interviewee has towards
open data; ‘bottlenecks’ refers to the main
challenges identified by the market; ‘expectations’
identifies what companies expect from government;
‘requirements’ are demands from the market; and
‘business sustainability’ explores how business
models can be built on top of open data. This table
was filled out during and after each interview (based
on the transcripts), and allows for a structured
comparison of the opinions expressed by the market
players. The following sections will provide the
analysis of the points discussed.
“Open Government Data” - based Business Models - A Market Consultation on the Relationship with Government in the Case of Mobility
and Route-Planning Applications
67
4 ANALYSIS
Each of the topics discussed with the experts will be
described and analysed in an aggregated way below.
4.1 Attitude
When asked about their general attitude towards
open data, the respondents agree that the core
principle certainly holds value. The argument that is
most often used is that the data in casu are generated
with taxpayer money and should be made publicly
available. Open data can be relevant for the internal
workings of a company (e.g., projects could be
finished in a more time-efficient way if all required
data are available in open formats), as well as in the
relation to external stakeholders (e.g., using open
data as a basis to enrich data collected by the
company and placing these combined data in the
market).
The respondents do have some recurring
remarks. The first relates to the availability of
certain data (specifically, the ability to find them).
The interviewed market players do not have clear-
enough insight in where the open data they are
looking for can be found. The Flemish Open Data
Portal is also not very well known among the
respondents. A second remark concerns the
reliability of the data. Respondents indicated a lack
of understanding of the context in which certain
datasets were collected and with what purpose (the
provenance of the data). This is not always clear to
potential reusers that may have completely different
types of reuse in mind than the application domains
for which the data were collected in the first place.
Provenance metadata can certainly be a solution
here. A third aspect that impacts the attitude towards
open data relates to communication (this will be
discussed in more detail further on).
The respondents seem to differ on how to build
business models on top of open data. For startups,
open data can be a key resource towards building a
minimal viable product (MVP), or even a more
substantial one, without (high) financial costs for
basic data. There is however some risk in completely
basing a company’s business model on open data.
The interviewed startups indicated being aware of
this risk, but pointed out that this risk is a calculated
one and that there are only very few known cases in
which a government organisation suddenly stopped
providing essential datasets. The larger companies
that were interviewed indicated that using a business
model based exclusively on open data would be too
high of a risk factor, at least without formal
guarantees from the data provider in terms of data
availability and reliability.
Globally speaking, the attitude towards open data
is positive and the interviewed stakeholders agree
with the basic principles behind the concept. From a
more practical perspective, some bottlenecks remain
that will be discussed in the following section.
4.2 Bottlenecks
As mentioned above, some companies voiced
concerns about finding the required data. The
interviewed stakeholders indicate there are too many
open data portals (partly as a result of Belgium’s
federated governance structures) and there is no
overview or catalogue of available data. A number
of respondents were not aware of the Open Data
Forum of the Flemish Government that links to open
data of various government organisations and local
governments. A single portal containing (links to) as
much data as possible appears to be important to the
market stakeholders, combined with clear
communication on the topic. Once the available data
is found, interpretation of the data becomes the next
bottleneck. Understanding the context in which a
dataset was created is not always obvious, nor is it
something that can be completely captured in the
metadata according to respondents. Reusers want to
understand why certain data were collected, why
certain data were not measured or why particular
outliers are seen in the data and so on.
This brings us to another issue that came to the
foreground in each interview: dialogue. The market
is eager to engage more strongly in a dialogue with
government to avoid some of the issues presented
here. Today, an ad-hoc approach is mostly in place,
in which departments, divisions, cabinets, agencies
and so on only communicate with the market on a
case-by-case basis. There is a clear appeal of
organising these meetings on a more structural basis.
Besides missing out on a fundamental dialogue
on open data, the interviewees would welcome more
communication with the data provider in day-to-day
practice. A more operational type of communication
was suggested with a single point of contact at
government level that provides support and answers
questions on certain datasets. This of course requires
effort. It also requires internal effort to cultivate and
support an open data culture within the different
administrations and divisions of government. The
interviewed stakeholders believe that such an open
data culture is not present in most government
organisations at all today or only beginning to
appear very slowly and gradually.
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The market players indicate there is little that is
not possible from a technical perspective and that
there are no specific technical barriers related to
starting to work with open data. What does become
apparent however is that the data itself often still
needs to be processed before it can be integrated into
a product. The stakeholders stress the idea that once
data are made available they can be used as such, is
wrong and that government should not assume this
is the case. This can turn out to be problematic for
startups that want to integrate certain data directly
into a product, but for several of the interviewed
companies, their business model at least partially
relies on cleaning up, enriching or improving open
data and then reselling it to third parties or in some
cases even to the organisation that initially provided
the data. In summary, the idea is that reusing open
data is, in most cases, also not ‘free for reusers,
even when the data is available at no cost.
A final bottleneck that was mentioned is the fact
that Flanders (and Belgium) lacks real-time open
data, which are extremely important for mobility and
route planning services.
4.3 Expectations
The biggest expectation from the market players is
that government does not impose any restrictions on
open data reuse (apart from those imposed by the
PSI directive, the open definition or other existing
legal frameworks of course). The market
respondents conclude that several government
bodies claim to pursue an open data policy, while in
practice, a number of barriers remain. This mainly
refers to the requirement posted by some public
organisations to sign a one-on-one contract between
the data provider and the company or organisation
that wants to reuse the data (i.e., in the case of the
Flemish and Brussels public transport companies).
An additional issue that is brought up in this context
is that data reusers do not have insight into the
agreements made with other companies, since a bi-
lateral contract is used rather than an open data
license (e.g., CC0).
A second expectation that was mentioned links
back to the idea of operational communications
between government and market, mentioned in the
preceding section. When open data is core to the
functioning of a product or service, companies
expect to have some guarantee that everything will
simply keep working. The market looks favourably
on service level agreement (SLA) models in which
the administrative organisation for example foresees
a 24/7 point of contact for technical problems or
questions on opened data. In such an SLA model,
most market players would be willing to compensate
the government, which does not necessarily go
against the principles of the PSI-directive or the
open definition. The government still makes raw
data available to anyone for free and for whatever
purpose, but can be compensated for any services it
offers on top of that raw data.
A final point in this section builds on this idea
and boils down to a fundamental interpretation of
the open data concept. Interviewees told us that,
when government indeed expects open data to lead
to the creation of new applications in the mobility
space, the role of existing mobile apps that are
offered by public transport companies should be
revised. A number of existing websites and apps
owned and operated by the different public transport
organisations in Belgium today offer multimodal
route planning information (e.g., De Lijn, NMBS,
MIVB, and TEC). A number of market players
expressed that it is extremely difficult to compete
with these services, especially given the strong
marketing power of these public companies (e.g.,
through advertising in the public space and brand
recognition). Despite the fact that these apps are
often criticised and receive poor ratings in the online
apps marketplaces, it is argued that the marketing
and communication power of these public
organisations is very difficult to compete with, for
companies that want to enter the same market. If
government claims to fully pursue an open data
strategy, the market stakeholders feel that public
organisations should stop commissioning, building
and maintaining these types of apps.
4.4 Requirements
When asked about the requirements the market
players would expect from government, opinions
were more varied. There was no consensus on the
measures government should take to stimulate the
reuse of open data or the development of innovative
mobility apps. This could be related to the different
types of companies that were interviewed (with
professional developers building commissioned apps
for customers whereas startups may be more
inclined to develop their own products or services).
Whatever supporting measures government
would take to stimulate open data reuse, they will
then need to be adapted to the type of developer or
reuser they are trying to reach. For students,
hobbyists, and even startups a competition model in
which some basic requirements are detailed and a
limited award is made available, may suffice to kick-
“Open Government Data” - based Business Models - A Market Consultation on the Relationship with Government in the Case of Mobility
and Route-Planning Applications
69
start the development of some innovative apps (or
concepts). More professional companies may be less
inclined to participate in such a competition, as they
would prefer cost-covering measures to create new
applications and services. A proposed example could
be that the government guarantees to use a service
for the first five years after development, or assigns
a bonus when the developer reaches certain KPIs or
goals (e.g., a certain amount of users, access to
enriched data based on the app’s usage, …).
There was consensus among the interviewed
companies that there should be one basic criterion in
whatever supportive initiative government would
undertake: the business plan. In order to arrive at
solutions that can improve mobility on the long term
while providing an interesting value proposition to
the end user, the basic requirement is a solid
business plan with a coherent business model behind
it. The final aspect that was discussed with the
respondents goes more in depth on this matter.
4.5 Business Sustainability
A theme that ran through all the interviews with the
market players was the challenge of building a
business model on top of open data that is
sustainable on the long term. Regarding the payment
models of the apps and services, the market players
seem to agree that the consumer will no longer be
willing to pay for the app itself. Other research also
suggests that the value is higher up in the value
chain (see, e.g., Walravens, 2015). The interviewed
experts also stated that advertisement-based models
are trickier on mobile devices and perhaps even
more so in the domain of mobility. Freemium
models are applied more in mobile apps and seem to
pay off in certain categories, but market players are
also actively exploring models in which an app with
full functionality is made available for free to the
public and the additional data that the use of the app
generates, is recombined with other (open) data, to
be sold on to interested parties. Through this
approach, the buyers of this data get additional
insight in the actual use of apps and services, and by
extension the behaviour of the people using them.
When such an app is based on open data, it may also
be interesting for the data provider to receive an
enriched version of that data set back (for free or on
the basis of a paid agreement), as it can provide
more insight into the data that is already being
collected by the organisation. If the data provider is
a public body in such a case, this enriched
information may also support evidence-based policy
making. As mentioned earlier, open data can also
create a direct financial return for government, by
offering SLA’s on top of the data. On the other
hand, this would also require rather significant
investment from government, mostly related to
training and availability of people. Next to models
that directly leverage the data, the market also sees a
lot of opportunities in further supporting government
through consulting and technical guidance. The
respondents indicated that currently a lot of
consultancy on open data is asked for, which is a
different type of commercial opportunity tied to
open data.
The most important distinctive feature (and
perhaps business potential) of mobility apps
themselves was stated to be the intermodal aspect of
route planning applications, as well as integrating all
kinds of contextual data into the travel advice
provided to end users. The idea is that a user plans a
route in the app and receives travel advice that truly
combines different kinds of transport options (rather
than the separate modes of transport presented in
many apps today) and also dynamically and in real-
time adapts its travel advice based on road
conditions, weather and so on. In general, the
interviewed market players still see a lot of potential
for innovation in this domain and believe
opportunities exist to create value that is currently
not being captured.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The conclusions we can draw from this market
consultation are not univocal. In that sense, it has
proven interesting to follow a purposeful sampling
approach and interview divergent types of potential
reusers of open data that have different customers,
business models, or activities in mobility. It does
make it slightly more challenging to provide a
universally applicable recommendation with regards
to the role government can play in stimulating the
uptake of open data. This is in fact the first
conclusion: each governmental department or public
body will have its own specificities or ways of
operating, which in some cases will also be tied into
the application domain it has competences over.
This means that tailor-made plans of approach will
likely need to be developed. Additionally, whatever
supporting or market-stimulating initiatives
governments may want to undertake, they will need
to be adapted to these specific contextual factors.
What has become clear is that the concept of
open data is generally perceived as positive by the
interviewed stakeholders. There also is a demand for
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more and higher-quality (richer and more correct)
open data, on the condition that this is made
available in an accessible way and not as the result
of one-on-one contracts. Good communication about
what is available and where, is key in this, together
with the organisation responsible for providing the
data.
To further stimulate interesting reuse, the market
would like governments to consider ways in which
the latter can provide some basic guarantees that
mainly pertain to availability of data, to technical
support and to a single point of contact with high
availability. Next to the freely available open data,
some market players would be willing to pay for a
SLA. However, early feedback from government
seems to indicate the cost would likely be too high
in relation to the return.
Another conclusion is that the sector of mobility
remains very interesting and still has high potential
value that is currently not unlocked. Route planning
services still have a future according to the
respondents and there is still room for innovation in
this domain. This progress is mostly identified in
true intermodal route planning that can take the
context of the user into account in innovative ways,
as well as the predicted situation on his trajectory.
One condition for all of this to come to fruition
would be for government to reconsider the position
of its own mobility applications and services,
according to the market players. These existing
public body apps are said to hinder the market
potential of new and innovative apps.
Next to this, any stimulating measures
government may want to take to increase open data
uptake will need to be adapted to specific and
diverse target audiences. It will be of high
importance to consider both the audience, but also
the end goal and the type of applications or services
governments would like to see created, when
considering any stimulating measures.
Perhaps one of the most important conclusions of
this research ties into the idea of ‘dialogue’. Each of
the market players indicated it would look forward
to more structural dialogue between government and
market players (as well as other stakeholders from
civil society for example). Not only from an
operational perspective, but much more to
understand why certain decisions are being made,
why certain data sets are open or closed, what the
government’s roadmap is and so on. This process is
of course also beneficial to government as it can
better indicate and explain the types of reuse it
would like to see and for what reasons, or more
effectively gather input on which data are important
to open to the market, thus ensuring that its
investments in opening up data have not been in
vain. There are many different practical ways in
which such a dialogue may take place, but these are
secondary to the overall goal of increasing the
efficient and more purposeful reuse of open data.
Future research should explore the impact the form
of dialogue has on the results it achieves.
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