This book discusses the latest developments in the field of open data. The opening of data by public organizations has the potential to improve the public sector, inspire business innovation, and establish transparency. With this potential comes unique challenges; these developments impact the operation of governments as well as their relationship with private sector enterprises and society. Changes at the technical, organizational, managerial, and political level are taking place, which, in turn, impact policy-making and traditional institutional structures. This book contributes to the systematic analysis and publication of cutting-edge methods, tools, and approaches for more efficient data sharing policies, practices, and further research. Topics discussed include an introduction to open data, the open data landscape, the open data life cycle, open data policies, organizational issues, interoperability, infrastructure, business models, open data portal evaluation, and research directions, best practices, and guidelines. Written to address different perspectives, this book will be of equal interest to students and researchers, ICT industry staff, practitioners, policy makers and public servants.@en

One essential element of open data ecosystems concerns their development through feedback loops, discussions and dynamic supplier and user interactions. However, these elements appear barely to be part of existing open data practices. We conducted a survey which showed that most professional open data users did not know at least one open data infrastructure that enabled five specific types of discussion and feedback mechanisms. The survey showed that much can still be done to improve feedback and discussion on open data infrastructures. In this paper we discuss an open data infrastructure which has started to contribute to filling this gap. The discussed ENGAGE open data infrastructure combines functionalities to close the feedback loop and to return information to public authorities for better open data use and publication as well as establishing communication channels between stakeholders. This may effectively lead to the stimulation and facilitation of value generation from open data.@en