TY - JOUR
T1 - Tailoring open government data portals for lay citizens
T2 - A gamification theory approach
AU - Simonofski, Anthony
AU - Zuiderwijk, Anneke
AU - Clarinval, Antoine
AU - Hammedi, Wafa
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to acknowledge the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) for their support. The research pertaining to these results received financial aid from the Federal Science Policy according to the agreement of subsidy no. [B2/191/P3/DIGI4FED].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/8
Y1 - 2022/8
N2 - Government policies focused on Open Government Data (OGD) often aim to stimulate the provision of public, interoperable data towards any user, including lay citizens, through online portals. However, these OGD portals are mostly developed for expert users. This hinders the realization of critical values such as transparency, empowerment, and equality of access. Following a Design Science Research approach, this study aims to examine how gamification can help tailor OGD portals for lay citizens. As a pre-condition to this goal, we identify requirements toward OGD portals through twenty interviews with experts and lay citizens. Compared to expert users, lay citizens expect an OGD portal with a more playful interface, vulgarized content, customized visualizations, and transparency-related datasets in a human-readable format. Second, we develop our research artifact, the OGD portal prototype, implementing fifteen design propositions using gamification theory to address lay citizens’ requirements. Third, the evaluation with ten lay citizens reveals the perceived usefulness of the design propositions. Badges were evaluated as most useful to highlight portal relevance. This study contributes to OGD theory development by identifying lay citizens' requirements towards OGD use. Furthermore, this study is the first to reveal the usefulness of implementing notions from gamification theory into OGD portal design. Finally, practitioners can use our findings to make OGD portals more inclusive and thus contribute to attaining key OGD policy objectives.
AB - Government policies focused on Open Government Data (OGD) often aim to stimulate the provision of public, interoperable data towards any user, including lay citizens, through online portals. However, these OGD portals are mostly developed for expert users. This hinders the realization of critical values such as transparency, empowerment, and equality of access. Following a Design Science Research approach, this study aims to examine how gamification can help tailor OGD portals for lay citizens. As a pre-condition to this goal, we identify requirements toward OGD portals through twenty interviews with experts and lay citizens. Compared to expert users, lay citizens expect an OGD portal with a more playful interface, vulgarized content, customized visualizations, and transparency-related datasets in a human-readable format. Second, we develop our research artifact, the OGD portal prototype, implementing fifteen design propositions using gamification theory to address lay citizens’ requirements. Third, the evaluation with ten lay citizens reveals the perceived usefulness of the design propositions. Badges were evaluated as most useful to highlight portal relevance. This study contributes to OGD theory development by identifying lay citizens' requirements towards OGD use. Furthermore, this study is the first to reveal the usefulness of implementing notions from gamification theory into OGD portal design. Finally, practitioners can use our findings to make OGD portals more inclusive and thus contribute to attaining key OGD policy objectives.
KW - Design science research
KW - Gamification
KW - Lay citizens
KW - Open government data
KW - Portals
KW - Requirements
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85126954045&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2022.102511
DO - 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2022.102511
M3 - Article
SN - 0268-4012
VL - 65
JO - International Journal of Information Management
JF - International Journal of Information Management
M1 - 102511
ER -