Open Government Data usage: A brief overview

The increasingly massive spreading of Open Government Data (OGD) is hailed as a driving force for economic and social growth, as well as an essential factor in promoting public awareness of the work of institutional decision-makers. However, this high data availability can disorient users when deciding which sources are best suited to their needs. The awareness of this indecision worries the heads of OGD portals, who have to face the increasingly concrete risk that a large part of their information assets can remain unused. To assess the merits of these concerns, this document aims to provide a snapshot on the use of OGD portals based on usage indicators directly or programmatically obtainable. Considering an adequately representative sample of OGD portals, our analysis highlighted two aspects. A confirmation of the fact that most of the published datasets are very lightly used. The perception that information about the use of portals is rarely made available to the users.