Considerations in releasing public data: The case of local governments in Korea

Abstract

Local governments play a very important role in providing and disseminating public data; with the assistance of the national government, they also strive to promote effective policies for accessing this data. However, local governments face challenges in independently promoting public data policies owing to budget, manpower and technical constraints. This study analyses public data provided by local governments in South Korea from the perspective of management and use, apart from suggesting considerations for the public data policies of local governments. Public data provided by local governments were also collected, and both the data management method and use of such data were evaluated. Data management measures the currentness in complying with the update policy for each dataset, and the data utilisation measures the relationship between view and download as usefulness. A clustering analysis was conducted to analyse the common characteristics of individual local governments. According to the research results, most local governments do not systematically manage their datasets, and the use of the data provided is extremely low. It is therefore necessary to establish an effective data policy that considers the characteristics of local governments.