TIMELINESS OF OPEN DATA IN OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA PORTALS THROUGH PANDEMIC-RELATED DATA: A LONG DATA WAY FROM THE PUBLISHER TO THE USER

TIMELINESS OF OPEN DATA IN OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA
PORTALS THROUGH PANDEMIC-RELATED DATA:
A LONG DATA WAY FROM THE PUBLISHER TO THE USER
The Fourth International Conference on Multimedia Computing, Networking and Applications (MCNA2020)
October 19th - 22nd, 2020 - Valencia, Spain (web-based)
Anastasija Nikiforova, PhD
Faculty of Computing, University of Latvia
Anastasija.Nikiforova@lu.lv

8 PRINCIPLES OF OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA
Source: Tauberer, J., “Open Government Data: The Book,” [online]. 2014, [vid. 2015-04-12]. Dostupné z: https://opengovdata. io.
Complete - data are made available. Public data is data that is not subject to valid
privacy, security or privilege limitations.
Primary – are as collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity,
not in aggregate or modified forms.
Timely - are made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.
Accessible - are available to the widest range of users for the widest range of
purposes.
Machine-processable - are reasonably structured to allow automated processing.
Non-discriminatory - available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.
Non-proprietary - available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.
License-free – are not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret
regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed.

RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY
 Timeliness is one of the primary principles of open data, which is considered to be a success factor, while
at the same time it is one of the biggest barriers that can disrupt users trust in data and even the desire to
use the entire open data portal.
 CHALLENGE: assessing this aspect is a very difficult non-trivial task task that, in most cases, becomes an
impossible for open data users.
 There is therefore a lack of comparative studies on the timeliness of data of different national open data
portals.

RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY
 Unfortunately, 2020 gave the opportunity to find out this by analysing the timeliness of Covid-19-related data
sets in relation to the first case observed in a country.
 The study thus fills the gap of comparative studies by addressing 60 countries and their OGD portals
concerning the timeliness of the data, providing a report on how much and what countries provide the open
data as quickly as possible.
 It makes it possible to understand how quickly OGD portals react to emergencies by opening and updating data
for their further potential reuse, which is essential in the digital data-driven world.

ANALYSIS METHOD
 60 countries and their national open data portals addressed, by exploring:
0) is the open government data portal available?
1) are the open data on Covid-19 published?
2) have they been published in a timely manner? - verified by comparing the dates of the first case identified in a given
country and the first release of open data on this topic,
3) are these data regularly updated?
4) are the data available in a machine-readable format?
5) whether open data on the particular country are available on the European data portal (for European countries only)?
6) which portals provide information on data usage and reuse?
7) what this information tells about the value of the data opened?
Question: how quickly data on Covid-19 [as an example of high value data sets] come to open government data portals?

ANALYSIS METHOD
Aspect examined/ question asked Value type Source
When was 1st case of Covid-19 identified? date [9]**
Are the open data on Covid-19 available on the OGD portal? Boolean OGD portal
When was the term Covid-19 first mentioned? date OGD portal
When was the 1st Covid-19-related open data set released? date OGD portal
What is the total number of Covid-19-related open data sets? number OGD portal
Were the data published in a timely manner?
Comparison of the first case (FC) against open data availability (ODA) – date of
the release of the first data set
[-1,0,1],
where 1 – “in less than 2 weeks”, 0 –
“in a month”, -1 – “more than in a
month”
comparison of [9]**
and OGD portal
Number of Covid-19-related open data sets available in the European Data
Portal (EDP)
number EDP portal
Are Covid-19 related data sets updated frequently? yes/ mainly/ not always/ no OGD portal
Are Covid-19 related data sets provided in a machine-readable format? yes/ mainly/ not always/ no OGD portal
[9]** - COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory. [Online]. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_by_country_and_territory

QUESTIONS 0 AND 1
Original/ initial data set
60 countries
Q0: is the open
government data
portal available?
52 countries
32 countries
Q1: are the open
data on Covid-19
published?
0) is the open government data portal available?
1) are the open data on Covid-19 published?
!!! These data sets appear also the most popular on the OGD portals, as they
address probably the most urgent and crucial data up today.

Country
Release date &
frequency of
updates [29]
machine-
readability
[29]
1st case of
Covid-19
[7]
Open
data
availabl
e
1st
mentioning
(DD/MM/YY
YY)
Release
date
(DD/MM/20
20)
# of data
sets
FC/ODA
(-1,0,1)
EDP
availabl
e #
frequently?
(yes/no)
machine-
readable?
(yes/no)
France 3,00 2,97 24.02. 1 09.09.2014 29.02. 106 1 362 yes yes
Spain 2,91 2,09 31.01. 1 26.06.2018 n/a, March 97 0 108 yes yes
Ireland 2,55 2,36 29.02. 1 31.03.2020 31.03. 11 -1 12 yes mainly
Cyprus 2,84 2,69 09.03. 1 18.12.2017 07.04. 19 0 17 yes yes
Finland 2,85 2,24 29.01. 0
Slovenia 3,00 2,94 04.03. 0
Austria 2,97 2,84 25.02. 1 25.02.2020 25.02. 16 1 1 no yes
Romania 2,13 2,03 26.02. 0
Luxembourg 2,91 2,00 29.02. 1 02.04.2020 23.04. 29 -1 30 yes yes
Netherlands 2,13 2,00 27.02. 1 n/a n/a 12 n/a 16 yes not always
Latvia 2,90 2,10 02.03. 1 27.03.2020 27.03. 2 0 2 yes yes
Poland 2,94 2,00 04.03. 1 20.05.2020 - 1 - - no yes
Italy 2,15 2,18 30.01. 1 01.03.2020 n/a, 01.03. 29 0 21 yes yes
Germany 2,88 2,00 27.01. 1 25.03.2020 25.03. 11 -1 35 yes yes
Greece 2,28 2,00 26.02. 0
Croatia 2,00 2,03 25.02. 1 28.04.2020 28.04. 1 -1 1 yes yes
Belgium 1,94 2,00 04.02. 1 n/a n/a 17 n/a 16 yes yes
Estonia 3,00 2,06 27.02. 1 14.03.2020 14.03. 3 0 - yes yes
Denmark 1,19 2,06 27.02. 1 16.03.2020 - 1 - - no no
ANALYSIS RESULTS (PART#1: 19 OUT OF 52)

QUESTIONS 0 AND 1
 14 countries have published some data sets, partly related to Covid-19 or informative
materials before more specific data sets aimed to provide data on the current state in the
country that can be further reused producing valuable results.
 4 countries - Spain, France, Cyprus and Switzerland, have adapted/ updated already
existing data sets with Covid-19 data, since the pandemic affected a number of aspects of
everyday life, and in many cases data on such topics as public places, traffic and other were
also affected.
 Although this is a positive point in most countries (not only the statistical data sets but
other valuable data sources were also published), in three cases - Poland, Denmark, New
Zealand – data of that nature are only data available.

QUESTIONS 2 AND 3
Q3: Are these data regularly updated?
Q2: Have they been published in a timely manner?
verified by comparing the dates of the first case identified in a
given country and the first release of open data on this topic
Overall, given that this aspect is usually the most complicated for
almost all open data, the results obtained are relatively good.
no conclusions can be reached on the data currency 
users may be less likely to use the data

QUESTION 4: are the data available in a machine-readable format?
 24 countries provide data in a machine-readable format that can be easily accessed and processed without additional actions;
 Compared to previous study, only Switzerland and Canada were evaluated better than in the current study, while for other
highly assessed portals this tendency was identified in the previous study.
 Some portals – USA, Estonia, Colombia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Sweden, Germany, Croatia, Australia, Taiwan and
New Zealand, demonstrated even better results publishing Covid-19-related data.
BUT! these portals have published not only data but also
related external links and laws, as well as news to inform
their citizen about the matter as much as possible.
 7 countries - South Korea, Australia, Switzerland, United Kingdom,
Canada, Netherlands and Ireland, sometimes experience
difficulties,
 2 countries face bigger challenges - .html to other resources and .pdf
without machine-readable files, making the re-use of data
challenging.

one of the countries that supplied
Covid-19-related data to the
audience as soon as possible - 5 days after
the first case identified in the country.
The high number of re-uses of open data in
France, can be easily explained by an excellent
opportunity provided by the portal to users – a
tool that allows stakeholders to upload their
use-case, thereby facilitating user
participation
QUESTION 6: which portals provide
information on data usage and reuse?
 30 portals provides showcases, i.e. open data-based applications, services etc.;
 Cyprus, Spain and Taiwan - 3 Covid-19-related open data-based applications;
 Switzerland - 2 use-cases,
 Polish and Austrian data were used to create 1 application.
France is the leader, which data was used to produce 129 applications.
 Netherlands and Luxembourg - 6 data sets among 12 and 29 Covid-19-related open data
sets were reused.
Open data of France, Austria and Switzerland were made available in a timely manner,
however, the open data of Taiwan and Luxembourg became available with a delay 
in terms of pandemic and its harmful nature, the audience is attracted even to data
becoming available with a delay, where frequency of updates are of higher importance

 Of the 52 national open data portals, only 32 portals provide their users with Covid-19-related open data.
 Only 4 countries published data in the first two weeks, while another 6 countries opened them in the first month, and 14 countries have
done this in more than a month after the first cases, while for other countries these data cannot be collected at all.
 Most countries provide data in a machine-readable format, while some countries sometimes face challenges in this respect.
 Some countries publish not only data but also related news and external links to inform their citizen about this issue as much as
possible.
 Most portals provide users with data that are regularly updated, while 6 countries face great challenge in this respect, as long as some
countries do not provide data on updates at all, therefore no conclusions can be reached on the data currency, so users may be less likely
to use the data.
 Some OGD portals were found to have a delayed response during the pandemic compared to the normal situation without emergencies.
 In some aspects, such as machine-readability, most OGD portals demonstrated significantly better results, i.e. Covid-19-related data
were provided in an easy to process format, while usually this aspect is a challenge for some countries.
RESULTS

 The study fills out the lack of comparative studies on the timeliness of data of 52 OGD portals, providing a report on how much and
what are those countries providing open data as soon as possible and which countries face challenges in these terms.
 These results cannot be generalized, since only one specific topic has been addressed, but, nevertheless, this shows the behaviour
trends of the OGD portals in terms of extreme situations.
 Even a pandemic cannot compel OGD portals to publish the data that complies with all open data principles. However, there are
countries which portals are sufficiently competitive. In most cases, these countries are the same ones that show high results out of
pandemic times.
 Open data, particularly those published and updated in time, attract audience interest and are used not only to track the state of play in
the country, but also to develop solutions that benefit the entire society as expected from the open data.
The publication of open data should be done not only because it is a modern trend, but also because it incentivises
scientists, researchers and enthusiasts to reuse them by transforming data into knowledge and value, providing
solutions transforming and improving the world.
CONCLUSIONS

THANK YOU!
For more information, see ResearchGate
See also anastasijanikiforova.com
For questions or any other queries, contact me via email - Anastasija.Nikiforova@lu.lv
Article: Nikiforova, A. (2020, October). Timeliness of open data in open government data portals through pandemic-related data: a
long data way from the publisher to the user. In 2020 Fourth International Conference on Multimedia Computing, Networking and
Applications (MCNA) (pp. 131-138). IEEE.

TIMELINESS OF OPEN DATA IN OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA PORTALS THROUGH PANDEMIC-RELATED DATA: A LONG DATA WAY FROM THE PUBLISHER TO THE USER

More Related Content

What's hot (19)

Similar to TIMELINESS OF OPEN DATA IN OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA PORTALS THROUGH PANDEMIC-RELATED DATA: A LONG DATA WAY FROM THE PUBLISHER TO THE USER (20)

More from Anastasija Nikiforova (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

TIMELINESS OF OPEN DATA IN OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA PORTALS THROUGH PANDEMIC-RELATED DATA: A LONG DATA WAY FROM THE PUBLISHER TO THE USER