Cultivating open government data platform ecosystems through governance: Lessons from Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Montevideo

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2020.101479Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • Open government data (OGD) initiatives are considered from the perspective of digital innovation platforms.

  • Presents a governance model to facilitate the cultivation of an OGD platform ecosystem to foster innovation

  • Analyzes three empirical cases set in Latin America concerning the cultivation of OGD ecosystems to foster innovation.

  • Describes the governance components used to cultivate of an OGD platform ecosystem and explains how they are deployed.

  • Presents recommendations to governments in emerging countries concerning the cultivation of open data platform ecosystems.

Abstract

Open government data (OGD) initiatives are an emergent platform research topic. There is little understanding how these platforms are governed for the innovation of services using open data, where the cultivation of an installed base of heterogeneous service innovators can lead to increased usage of OGD. In this paper, we draw on established literature from digital platforms research to investigate how service innovation is cultivated in open government data contexts. We employ a comparative case study of open government data platforms in three leading Latin American cities and draw upon the concept of boundary resources taken from platform theory. Our research generates two key contributions. First, we propose a theoretical model, which explains how an OGD platform owner is able to govern the demand and the supply side of its platform to facilitate the cultivation of a platform ecosystem. Second, we develop contributions to practice in terms of a set of recommendations for governments in emerging countries concerning how to establish and manage a vibrant OGD platform ecosystem.

Keywords

Open government data platforms
Platform innovation
Governance
Boundary resources
Latin America

Cited by (0)

Carla Bonina is tenured Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Surrey Business School in the UK. Carla has fifteen years of experience conducting research on digital innovation, entrepreneurship and policy for international development. Her work has appeared in journals such as Government Information Quarterly and Information Systems Journal, and edited volumes published by the MIT Press. She provides regular strategic advice on digital transformation, open data and value creation in the digital economy to governments, international organisations and start-ups, including Avina Americas, the OECD, the IDRC and the World Bank among others. She is considered a Latin American expert. Carla holds a PhD in Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in the UK.

Ben Eaton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Digitalization at Copenhagen Business School and adjunct Associate Professor at Høyskolen Kristiania, Oslo. He has previously held academic positions in information systems departments at the University of Surrey, UK and the University of Oslo, Norway. Previous to this Ben worked in the telecoms industry for 15 years where his focus was on service innovation. His research interests therefore concern innovation on and within digital platforms and digital infrastructures. His work has been published in journals including MIS Quarterly, MISQ Executive and The Journal of Strategic Information Systems. Ben holds a PhD in Information Systems from the LSE, and his thesis concerning Apple's model of platform innovation won the prestigious ACM SIGMIS doctoral dissertation competition in 2013. Organisations that he has advised include Thomson Reuters, Telenor, the BBC, Orange, Thales and BT.