Open Government Data: Usage trends and metadata quality

Abstract

Open Government Data (OGD) have the potential to support social and economic progress. However, this potential can be frustrated if these data remain unused. Although the literature suggests that OGD data sets’ metadata quality is one of the main factors affecting their use, to the best of our knowledge, no quantitative study provided evidence of this relationship. Considering about 400,000 data sets of 28 national, municipal and international OGD portals, we have programmatically analysed their usage, their metadata quality and the relationship between the two. Our analysis has highlighted three main findings. First, regardless of their size, the software platform adopted, and their administrative and territorial coverage, most OGD data sets are underutilised. Second, OGD portals pay varying attention to the quality of their data sets’ metadata. Third, we did not find clear evidence that data sets’ usage is positively correlated to better metadata publishing practices. Finally, we have considered other factors, such as data sets’ category, and some demographic characteristics of the OGD portals, and analysed their relationship with data sets’ usage, obtaining partially affirmative answers.