Sustainability of (Open) Data Portals Infrastructures reports pt. 2
Publication Date/Time
2020-08-05T07:00:00+00:00
Country
Europe
This is the second piece in a series about the “Sustainability of
(Open) Data Portal Infrastructures” reports. In this highlight, the
focus is on “Developing Microeconomic Indicators Through Open Data
Reuse”.
Over the coming months, all six reports included in the
”Sustainability of (Open) Data Portals Infrastructure”
[/en/impact-studies/studies?keywords=&section=7&source=EDP&country=All&year=&items_per_page=10&page=1]
will be summarized into featured highlights. This particular article
will focus on the second report: “Developing Microeconomic
Indicators Through Open Data Re-use”
[/sites/default/files/sustainability-data-portal-infrastructure_2_developing-indicators.pdf].
This report discusses the importance of measuring the economic impact
of open data, the use of microeconomic metrics, and how the re-use of
open data can support in this matter.

THE VALUE OF OPEN DATA RE-USE

Ensuring a sustainable future for open data, and securing governments
ongoing commitment to such work, requires evidence of the societal
impact of open data, including (but not limited to) its economic
impact. However, effectively measuring the economic impact of open
data is still an existing challenge. This challenge concerns
identifying the chain of causal links, devising appropriate tools and
methodology for measurement, and having sufficient resources to carry
out the evaluation.

The re-use of open government data creates value for both the public
and private sector in delivering services and insights. The challenges
of tracking value are in applying the appropriate measures to data
re-use. Microeconomic indicators have been developed, and are
summarised in the report, that track value creation and measure the
impact from the perspective of both the government and the private
sector.

METHODOLOGY & RESULTS

To develop appropriate microeconomic indicators, four cities were
analysed that were creating solutions to public sector challenges with
open data. They did this through open innovation projects: publishing
their data openly and co-creating public sector solutions with
external SMEs. The aim of the projects was to understand what impact
they were hoping to achieve and how they would assess this. By
following the open data innovations, a transferable method for
identifying and measuring the impact of individual open data projects
was developed, shown in the figure below.
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/2020-08-05_edp-02.png]
FIGURE 1: Information captured in case studies

The results of this method are summarised per city in the report,
focussing on the economic impact proposed in the smart city solutions.
The generalisable metrics extracted from the experiment are
categorised according to the accessibility project owners and
developers have to the data for measurement – OPERATIONS DATA
(in-house), RELATED PUBLIC SERVICES DATA (held by other public
services) and PRIVATE SECTOR DATA (financial and business data).

These results should encourage public sector portal owners to collect
and publish these metrics. Not only can public sector portal owners
increase public spending and efficiency transparency for their
citizens, but as more data is published it can be used cumulatively to
assess impact over a broader area and timescale. Policy makers should
encourage the creation and sharing of these metrics, possibly by
making it a requisite of funding of such data reuse projects.

As stated, this article focused on a few key findings of the report.
For more information on developing macro- and microeconomic indictors
through re-use and assessing different methods and metrics, for
example, explore the full report “Developing Microeconomic
Indicators through Open Data Re-use
[/sites/default/files/sustainability-data-portal-infrastructure_2_developing-indicators.pdf]”
on the EDP website.

Keep an eye out for our next the EDP team’s third featured highlight
on 2 SEPTEMBER 2020 that will focus on “Data Re-use: A Method for
Transforming Principles into Practice
[/sites/default/files/sustainability-data-portal-infrastructure_3_dataset-reuse.pdf]”.
Missed our first piece about “Measuring Use and Impacts of Portals
[/sites/default/files/sustainability-data-portal-infrastructure_1_measuring-use-impact.pdf]”?
Read the first piece
[/sites/default/files/sustainability-data-portal-infrastructure_1_measuring-use-impact.pdf]
in the series that discusses the importance of measuring open data;
issues to take into consideration when selecting a metric; examples of
metrics to measure the use and impact of portals; and examples of
lessons and best practices.

For more information or examples on open data, explore the European
Data Portal’s (EDP) news archive
[/en/news-events/news] and featured highlight section
[/en/news-events/news?keywords=&type=highlights&country=All&items_per_page=10].
Aware of open data examples or stories?  Share them with us via mail
[/en/feedback/form?type=4], and follow up on Twitter
[https://twitter.com/EU_DataPortal], Facebook
[http://www.facebook.com/EuropeanDataPortal] or LinkedIn
[https://www.linkedin.com/company/10478056/] to stay up to date!
