Open Government Meets Social Data

Dear Colleagues,

One focal point of the Open Government Initiative is Open Government data. Traditionally, data collected by governments is not easy to access or to process. Access to Open Government data can empower the citizens through easy access to previously unavailable government information, and allow them to participate in improving government processes and decision making. In addition, it allows businesses to innovate value-added services. The participation and collaboration of citizens in Open Government promises a fundamental transformation of government, including opportunities for policy changes, process streamlining, accountability, public-private partnerships, etc. In addition, the participation and collaboration also creates large amounts of citizen-generated data, which is often called social media data.

The Open Government Initiative can achieve the transformative effect on government through transparency, participation and collaboration, only when it can effectively digest, integrate and analyze the available social media data to understand the “voice”, “opinions” and “recommendations” of citizens and businesses. The government’s ability to perform social data analytics is essential to sense the citizens’ responses or reactions to new policy proposals and implementation methods, but the analytics needs to be applied cautiously, since social data may carry sensitive and private information. The Open Government also needs to lay out its sustainable social media strategies, and the businesses and citizens need to be able to integrate the fragmented Open Government data with semantic relationships to get a bigger and better picture of government policies and decision making.

This special issue will feature scholarly and practical studies addressing the research and policy issues arising when Open Government meets social data. We welcome socio-technical contributions on the topics listed below, but not limited to:

• Open Government data strategies
• social media strategies and experience
• semantic integration of Open Government data and social data
• social data analytics for government
• big government data
• citizen privacy in social data analytics
• open data and government innovation
• Open Government success factors and case studies
• smart government with open data
• participatory and collaborative government
• mashups and apps for citizen services
• open data integrity and security
• open data and policy making
• citizen journalism
• transparency in government
• open data mashups and visualization
• sustainable citizen engagement
• linked Open Government data
• crowd sourcing, citizen sensing, citizen opinion mining
• platforms for open government data analytics
• all applications of the Open Government data and social data

The contributions to the special issue should be addressed to academics, government practitioners, and citizens who are interested in understanding and envisioning how the combination of Open Government data and social data can transform today’s government into the government of the future.

Dr. Soon Ae Chun
Guest Editor

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