Shaping Local Open Data Initiatives: Politics and Implications

This article explores different perspectives attributed to the open data initiatives and how these perspectives shape the opening-up process. A socio-technical lens, the social construction of technology, was used to analyse a qualitative cross-case study of two Swedish municipalities. Findings revealed two ways of interpreting open data initiatives: 1) as a platform for techno-economic growth and 2) as a platform for co-created societal growth. These two approaches addressed the municipalities respective contextual challenges and interests alongside national recommendations in their aims to realize the open data initiative. In doing so, they diverged into the evolvement toward two different ends: the realization of open data and the realization of open government. To excel the understanding of actions taken to meet these ends, an additional set of differences between these municipalities is provided within a sociotechnical framework that allows us to discuss diverging evolvements of open data initiatives based on agreed and non-agreed interpretations of what is believed to be constructed.