Analysing the Characteristics of Open Government Data Portals in Croatia

Open government data (OGD) paradigm gained momentum in the recent years resulting in numerous OGD initiatives. These initiatives assured reliable and faster development of open data ecosystem on different administration levels. Diversity of government organizations dealing with different kinds of data, however, resulted in a variety of OGD initiatives. As a direct result, OGD portals developed through these initiatives show different functionalities, characteristics, and quality of provided data and services. This paper therefore aims to provide a better insight into the similarities and differences of data portals by analyzing their characteristics from thematical, semantical, functional, and technological perspective. The methodology used relies on the framework previously developed and implemented in Greece in 2015, consisting of multiple indicators assessing different characteristics of portals, in each of four perspectives. Results of the assessment show Croatian portals have well developed functionalities but also have limitations preventing data reuse. These limitations are mostly related to data discovery and absence of metadata and licenses by the publishing institutions.