A Risk-Benefit Analysis of Open Government Data Portals for Business

Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives have the potential to provide various benefits to the business sectors, such as market insights analysis, new product innovation, cost savings, improved decision-making, enriched collaboration, and increased transparency. However, OGD also carries potential negative consequences, including data inaccuracy, low data quality, privacy and security, data bias and discrimination, and legal compliance. Thus, this paper aims to comprehensively understand the potential risks and benefits associated with OGD portals and their causality levels. To investigate the causal relationships involved, a Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) model was employed, which is constructed using an explanatory strategy based on six main phases. In this research, interview sessions were conducted with five business practitioners who have experience in accessing and using datasets on the OGD portals. The study’s results indicate that the use of datasets on the OGD portal has a moderate level of potential risk, especially in terms of low data quality. Additionally, the potential benefits of using the OGD portal are also significant, particularly in helping businesses make informed decisions to improve their product innovation and services. This paper’s contribution lies in comprehensively understanding the potential risks and benefits of Open Government Data (OGD) portals for business sectors.