Open Government Data: A European Perspective - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 10

◾ Data acquisition: The tools and utilities available for data search, such that
the user can obtain information by agency, by category, or by key words,
among other criteria (Alexopoulos et al., 2013).
◾ Organizational approach for providing data: We distinguish between two
approaches: direct data provision, when data from various government agen-
cies are published in a single OGD portal, and indirect data provision, when
the data are published in a decentralized way (with each organization or
agency using its own website), while the OGD portal only offers a link to
these sites (Kalampokis et al., 2011).
◾ Data provision: OGD portals, apart from supplying data directly or indi-
rectly, may offer the option to view information online, to download it, or
both (Kalampokis et al., 2011).
◾ Visualization: If the OGD portal allows online data visualization, this
can be done using various display modes, including text, image, video, and
audio (Alexopoulos et al., 2013).
◾ Feedback: The possibilities offered by OGD for stakeholders to communicate
with government (by forms, e-mail or telephone).

1.4.2 Semantic Analysis

A semantic analysis was performed by examining the representation and structure
of the information available on the OGD portal. The data thus made available can
be in the form of simple, flat structures or that of comprehensive, linked ones. In
this analysis, we followed the methodology proposed by Alexopoulos et al. (2013)
and analyzed the following dimensions (see Figure 1.2):

◾

Level of metadata: Metadata is structured information that describes other
information and enables us to find, manage, and preserve it. In line with
Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (2011), we
distinguish between metadata ignorance, closed, open, and reusable metadata.

◾

Level of open data: Using the Five Stars of Linked Data classification pro-
posed by Berners-Lee (2010), but reduced to four stars because from the point
of view of a user, it is not known whether available data are linked to other
RDF data.

◾

Multilingualism: The multilingual capabilities of an OGD portal are mea-
sured, taking into account, therefore, the language in which the data are
presented. For this purpose, we distinguish between official language and
another language (Alexopoulos et al., 2013).

◾

Data format: In accordance with the formats used by Alexopoulos et al.
(2013) and those found in the OGD portals analyzed, we examined the most
common formats and analyzed a total of 19 types of formatting.