A Typology of Municipalities’ Roles and Expected User’s Roles in Open Government Data Release and Reuse

The purpose of this paper is to identify the roles municipalities take when engaging in Open Government Data (OGD) and the expectations of user’s roles they imply. According to the output delivered, the user can relate to data or data-based solutions. OGD is data released by public organisations to enhance government transparency, innovation, and participation. The realization of those benefits involves different roles, from providing data, developing solutions, to using them for a certain purpose. However, the definition of the municipalities’ and users’ roles in that context is unclear, which can impact the realization of the OGD benefits. This study uses Role Theory’s concepts as an analytical lens, following the Design Science Research approach to create a typology. We conducted a hermeneutic literature review, identified, and analysed 52 papers, to build a typology of the municipalities’ roles based on the goals, tasks, output delivered, and the expected users’ roles they generate. It results in seven classes of roles coming in pairs. We tested the typology on empirical cases: the 28 Belgian and 158 Swedish municipalities engaged in OGD. Five role pairs were encountered in the empirical cases, and two occurred only in previous literature. The typology can help municipalities to understand how their role choice calls for a certain type of users that cannot be generalized as a “citizen”. Role Theory opens new perspectives of research to understand their interdependence and raises fundamental role-related questions that should be given the same importance as technical and technological challenges.