In previous post I already shared my impressions with ICEGOV ICEGOV2022 conference – 15th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, which took place in a very specific place – Guimarães that is considered the birthplace of Portugal, providing some general insight on how it was, elaborated a bit on paper I presented there and the fact that it was nominated to the Best Paper Awards. Thus, this post I dedicate to one particular role I played, i.e. workshop chair.

If you actively follow me, you probably remember that some time ago I already posted that our workshop titled “Identification of high-value dataset determinants: is there a silver bullet?” organized by me, Charalampos Alexopoulos, Nina Rizun and Magdalena Ciesielska was accepted for ICEGOV2022. So now we finally brought it alive! Our workshop was among 7 accepted workshops, organized by such prominent organizations as UNDESA – United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, European Commission, UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and several more, which is just “wow”!

It took some time since as you might remember, the very first steps in this topic I took a year ago, i.e. this workshop is a continuation of the paper I presented at ICEGOV2021 – “Towards enrichment of the open government data: a stakeholder-centered determination of High-Value Data sets for Latvia“, which, in turn, was something what I did as a response to the request I received from my government, which was curious about this topic in the light of Open Data Directive (previously Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive). It was a simple one study, which was based on a survey of individual users and SME of Latvia aimed at clarifying their level of awareness about the existence of the OGD, their usage habits, as well as the overall level of satisfaction with the value of the OGD and their potential. Now the topic became even more topical, considering that even European Open Data Maturity Report is updating its methodology, as one of the new aspects including HVD. This, in turn, led to the fact that our workshop was even included in the list of upcoming events they suggest to consider and attend (see screenshots of schedule :)).

To say in a few words, in this workshop we initiated a discussion about the value of open data, and, more precisely, the concept of high value data(sets) and determinants / indicators that could allow not only identify them among existing data, but rather to identify, i.e., even if they are not previously published.

Together with our participants, we spoke about:
💡How can the “value” of open data be defined?
💡What are the current indicators for determining the value of data? Can they be used to identify valuable datasets to be opened? What are the country-specific high-value determinants (aspects)?
💡How high-value datasets can be identified? What mechanisms and/ or methods should be put in place to allow their determination?
💡Could it be there an automated way to gather information for HVD?
💡Can they be identified by third parties, e.g. researchers, enthusiasts AND potential data publishers, i.e. data owners?
💡What should be the scope of the framework?

The main point to be said on the mode of this workshop that it was a community-based, participatory, interactive workshop. Although it is clear that on the last day of the conference (the day after the official closing ceremony) all those registered for this workshop could not gather, it was still a valuable experience and we managed to have a nice event full of discussions with the participants, who got actively involved, which is especially pleasant, i.e. we managed to avoid sit-and-listen mode!!!

All in all, we had a nice event, where at least the first step in the direction we selected, were taken and some initial feedback was gathered.

Again, thank you, of Guimarães, Portugal, and, of course, organizers of ICEGOV2022 – University of Minho (Universidade do Minho) and UNU-eGOV – United Nations University!