Open data portal explained

An open data portal is any online platform which supports users in accessing collections of open data. Typical open data portals present the data of the organization which hosts the portal.

Government organizations sometimes host open data portals as a way of meeting their regional freedom of information legal requirements. Another common use case is open data portals for sharing data in some field of research for the benefit of other researchers.

Characteristics

The simplest open data portal is list of datasets with instructions for how anyone can access and use that data.^[1]

Characteristics of good open data portals include the use of open standards, access to data without human intervention, and analytics about what data people use.^[2]

Open data portals contain information of interest to citizens, business owners, nonprofit administrators, researchers, and journalists.^[3]

Uses

Government

A 2012 paper reported that government organizations which set up open data portals often find it challenging to predict what sorts of users will want the data and how they will use it.^[4]

In the European Union there is a central open data portal which connects anyone to the regional and subject specific data portals for various matters of government.^[5]

In the United States all the states and many cities offer open data portals.^{[6] [7]}

A report on the open data portal emphasized the need to develop the culture of appreciation of open data.^[8]

A review of open data portals in Australia found variation in what the portals offered and how they operated.^[9]

Science

There is a cancer genomics open data portal.^[10]

There is a portal for systems chemistry biology.^[11]

See also

• UK Power Networks Open Data Portal

Notes and References

1. Web site: Dodds . Leigh . What is a data portal? . Lost Boy . en . 13 October 2015.
2. Web site: koordinates . The ten features you need from your open data portal . koordinates.com . 30 December 2019 . en.
3. Web site: Warner . Tiana . Guide to Open Data: Using it, Sharing it, and Creating a Portal . Safe Software . en-CA . 10 May 2016.
4. Janssen . Marijn . Charalabidis . Yannis . Zuiderwijk . Anneke . Benefits, Adoption Barriers and Myths of Open Data and Open Government . Information Systems Management . September 2012 . 29 . 4 . 258–268 . 10.1080/10580530.2012.716740.
5. Web site: Open data portals . Digital Single Market - European Commission . en . 2 August 2013.
6. Web site: Brown . Meta S. . States Offer Information Resources: 50+ Open Data Portals . Forbes . en . 30 April 2018.
7. Web site: Brown . Meta S. . City Governments Making Public Data Easier To Get: 90 Municipal Open Data Portals . Forbes . en . 28 April 2018.
8. Book: Verma. Neeta. Gupta. M. P.. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance - ICEGOV '13. Open government data. 2013. 338–341. 10.1145/2591888.2591949. 9781450324564.
9. Chatfield. Akemi Takeoka. Reddick. Christopher G.. A longitudinal cross-sector analysis of open data portal service capability: The case of Australian local governments. Government Information Quarterly. 34. 2. 2017. 231–243. 0740-624X. 10.1016/j.giq.2017.02.004.
10. Zhang . J. . Baran . J. . Cros . A. . Guberman . J. M. . Haider . S. . Hsu . J. . Liang . Y. . Rivkin . E. . Wang . J. . Whitty . B. . Wong-Erasmus . M. . Yao . L. . Kasprzyk . A. . International Cancer Genome Consortium Data Portal--a one-stop shop for cancer genomics data . Database . bar026 . en . 10.1093/database/bar026 . 19 September 2011. 2011 . 21930502 . 3263593 .
11. Book: Chen. Bin. Ding. Ying. Wang. Huijun. Wild. David J.. Dong. Xiao. Sun. Yuyin. Zhu. Qian. Sankaranarayanan. Madhuvanthi. 2010 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology. Chem2Bio2RDF: A Linked Open Data Portal for Systems Chemical Biology. 2010. 232–239. 10.1109/WI-IAT.2010.183. 978-1-4244-8482-9.