Challenges and Benefits in an Open Data Initiative – Local Government Case Study of Myths and Realities

This paper investigates the myths and realities of open data at local government (a focused municipality) level. There are many expectations related to open government data (OGD) covering e.g. public transportation, car parks, public committee minutes and air quality measurements and the effects of more open public agencies and commercial possibilities, together with citizen benefits. Expectations are often uncritical and expressed in terms of rationalized myths. The purpose of this paper is to investigate myths and realities in a case study and to present lessons learned from focusing such dimensions in an ongoing and emerging local government OGD initiative. This study confirms previous research on open data myths, challenges and benefits from a local government perspective. The conclusions also illustrate three important findings directed to the existing body of research regarding the importance of alliances of stakeholders in OGD initiatives, aspects of heterogeneous organizations launching open data and reflections on the division of labour between public and private actors when handling different communication channels. Implications for research and practice are also outlined together with limitations and further research.