Open data initiatives in local governments: Study on statistical data disclosure

Abstract

“Open data” efforts have now become a global movement. Japanese government has intended to keep up with this global trend since the Open Government Data Strategy was adopted in 2012. Some local governments have followed the government policy. However, there has not been any previous study that quantitatively clarified what factors would influence the implementation of “open data” in a local government. So, clarifying this is our first research goal. Next, we focus on the data duplication problem between data existing on their homepages and newly constructed “open data.” The presence of similar confusing data on both those sites may cause various problems. Therefore, our second research goal is to investigate the actual state of data released by local governments and then find the hidden problem. We focused on demographic data as one of the most important basic statistical data. We conducted three types of surveys; an interview survey with responsible persons in advanced local governments, an additional analysis of “open data” actual situation survey, which was performed by Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, using cross tabulation by the size of population in a municipality, and a survey of demographic data of municipalities on the Internet. Finally, we found that; (1) the department in charge of “open data” initiatives and their implementation processes are important, in addition to the size of a municipality; (2) most municipalities maintain the existing homepage as it is, and separately add a new “open data” site; and (3) despite the data duplication on both the existing homepage site and the “open data” site, many municipalities do not clearly express the data duplication in writing.