E-GOS · Effective Governance of Open Spatial data

Effective Governance of Open Spatial data

Since the 1990s public authorities worldwide have invested considerable resources in the development of spatial data infrastructures (SDIs). SDI refers to the collection of technological and organizational components oriented towards facilitating and coordinating spatial data sharing. Spatial data, data that refer to a location on the earth, are critical for the execution of public tasks. The original focus of most SDI developments was on promoting and stimulating data sharing within the public sector. Recently, technological, institutional and societal developments have caused these SDIs to shift towards more open infrastructures in which businesses, citizens and other non-governmental actors are also considered as key stakeholders of the infrastructure. The development and implementation of open SDIs is about making spatial data available to the public as open data, but also about organizing and governing the infrastructure in an open manner, enabling and stimulating the participation of non-government actors. While governance has always been a crucial component in the development of SDIs, open SDIs create additional challenges related to the governance of the infrastructure, as new and additional governance approaches and instruments had to be implemented to manage the relationships and dependencies between the involved actors and organizations. Although there is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of governance in open data and SDIs, so far little is known about the different governance models and instruments that could be used for governing open data infrastructures. The central research question of the E-GOS project was: what is the impact of different models for governing open spatial data infrastructures on the performance of these infrastructures in Europe? To answer this research question, a case study approach was implemented, analyzing two leading countries in open data: the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The research was part of a Marie Sklodowska Curie-Individual Fellowship Project, that aimed to turn the experienced researcher into an outstanding candidate for research position in the field of open data, with particular focus on the governance and performance of open spatial data policies. Acquisition and transfer of knowledge and skills took place through the execution of the research project, and through participation in specific training activities and involvement of the researcher into the research, teaching and management activities of the Knowledge Center Open Data of Delft University of Technology.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union