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Open data is publicly available data that can be freely accessed, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose. Governments endeavour to transform their public sector through electronic government (e-government) for effective governance, transparency, accountability and citizen participation in democratic processes and policymaking. Open Government Data (OGD) is a part of e-government initiatives to make government data available to all, mainly in a machine-readable format, intending to promote transparency, accountability and value creation. An OGD portal is a web-based platform that is built specifically for the purpose of sharing open government data.
According to Arzberger et al. (2004, p. 138), “publicly funded research data should be openly available to the maximum extent possible.” Implementation of open data increases the potential to exploit the advantages of new developments and reinforce the existing structure (Arribas-Bel et al., 2021; Kraemer & King, 2006; E. Ruijer et al., 2017). The increased focus on open data by governments generates a new prospect for innovation that integrates diverse data without predetermined limitations to create new insights, and such progress creates an avenue for technical infrastructure, data quality and external pressure (Dwivedi et al., 2017). At present, open data initiatives are increasingly developed, but they are barely able to guide the publication and use of open data (Hossain et al., 2016). Still, the motivation for open government relies on the hope of promoting transparency (Wiencierz & Lünich, 2022), enhancing citizen participation in government (Hivon & Titah, 2017), ensuring the accountability of public officials (Attard et al., 2015; Lourenço et al., 2017), improving decision-making (Luthfi & Janssen, 2019), and adding social or economic value (Altayar, 2018; Cabitza et al., 2020; Nikiforova, 2021). As OGD can eliminate the traditional gap between the citizens and public organisations, it discloses the willingness of the government organisations to weigh the constructive and opposing views and give up governmental control to transform the public sector (M. Janssen et al., 2012). With the open data, the government tries to get aligned towards achieving the stage of smart government (Bertot & Choi, 2013). The availability of data through OGD may influence industries to develop innovative tools and techniques that could benefit the private sector, the public sector, and the economy (Graves, 2011, van Dijk et al., 2013). Thus, the benefits of OGD are vast in several dimensions (Hossain et al., 2016) such as political and social (M. Janssen et al., 2012; Meng et al., 2019), economic (Alderete, 2020; Nikiforova, 2021), innovative (Zuiderwijk et al., 2014) and operational and technical (Albano & Reinhard, 2014; M. Janssen et al., 2012; Parycek et al., 2014).