Creating Impact from Governmental Open Data (OD): Innovation Process Transparency in OD Contest Design

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

Making governmental information publicly available can fuel innovation. The release of weather and GPS data led to the Weather Channel and commercial agricultural advisory services as historical examples of novel applications that created public benefit. The Open Government initiative, launched in 2009, provides access to several hundred thousand machine-readable datasets in areas such as energy, health, and education. However, despite the potential for public benefit there are concerns that this platform for governmental open data does not sufficiently spur civic participation, resulting in fewer applications. Increasing access and usability of these data would result in more effective use of government data for the benefit of American citizens. This project examines the use of innovation contests as a way to develop solutions that use open governmental data. Innovation contests involve a large crowd of non-expert users, developers, entrepreneurs, and government officials who jointly develop solutions. The Federal Government engages in such contests (e.g. Challenge.gov). This project tests an alternative competition design that fosters transparency and encourages collaboration. The study involves field experiments with several hundred participants. Participants collectively decide what problems to solve and share their perspectives towards the innovative solutions created by the crowd. The field experiments consider alternative mechanisms for sharing different types of innovation-related knowledge and for increasing transparent decision making in order to drive citizen participation and spur the development of novel and useful open data solutions.