Factors influencing open government data post-adoption in the public sector: The perspective of data providers

Providing access to non-confidential government data to the public is one
of the initiatives adopted by many governments today to embrace government
transparency practices. The initiative of publishing non-confidential
government data for the public to use and re-use without restrictions is
known as Open Government Data (OGD). Nevertheless, after several years
after its inception, the direction of OGD implementation remains
uncertain. The extant literature on OGD adoption concentrates primarily on
identifying factors influencing adoption decisions. Yet, studies on the
underlying factors influencing OGD after the adoption phase are scarce.
Based on these issues, this study investigated the post-adoption of OGD in
the public sector, particularly the data provider agencies. The OGD
post-adoption framework is crafted by anchoring the
Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework and the innovation
adoption process theory. The data was collected from 266 government
agencies in the Malaysian public sector. This study employed the partial
least square-structural equation modeling as the statistical technique for
factor analysis. The results indicate that two factors from the
organizational context (top management support, organizational culture)
and two from the technological context (complexity, relative advantage)
have a significant contribution to the post-adoption of OGD in the public
sector. The contribution of this study is threefold: theoretical,
conceptual, and practical. This study contributed theoretically by
introducing the post-adoption framework of OGD that comprises the
acceptance, routinization, and infusion stages. As the majority of OGD
adoption studies conclude their analysis at the adoption (decisions)
phase, this study gives novel insight to extend the analysis into
unexplored territory, specifically the post-adoption phase. Conceptually,
this study presents two new factors in the environmental context to be
explored in the OGD adoption study, namely, the data demand and
incentives. The fact that data providers are not influenced by data
requests from the agency’s external environment and incentive offerings is
something that needs further investigation. In practicality, the findings
of this study are anticipated to assist policymakers in strategizing for
long-term OGD implementation from the data provider’s perspective. This
effort is crucial to ensure that the OGD initiatives will be incorporated
into the public sector’s service thrust and become one of the digital
government services provided to the citizen.