Title: Citizen Engagement with Open Government Data: Lessons learned from Indonesia’s
Presidential Election
Purpose: Citizen engagement is key to the success of many Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives.
However, not much is known regarding how this type of engagement emerges. The objective of this
study is twofold: 1) to investigate the necessary conditions for the emergence of citizen-led
engagement with OGD and 2) to identify which factors stimulate this type of engagement.
Design/methodology/approach: First, we created a systematic overview of the literature to develop
a conceptual model of conditions and factors of OGD citizen engagement at the societal,
organizational, and individual levels. Second, we used the conceptual model to systematically study
citizens’ engagement in the case of a particular OGD initiative, namely the digitization of presidential
election results data in Indonesia in 2014. We used multiple information sources, including interviews
and documents, to explore the conditions and factors of OGD citizen-led engagement in this case.
Findings: From the literature we identified five conditions for the emergence of OGD citizen-led
engagement: 1) the availability of a legal and political framework that grants mandate to open up
government data, 2) sufficient budgetary resources allocated for OGD provision, 3) the availability of
OGD feedback mechanisms, 4) citizens’ perceived ease of engagement, and 5) motivated citizens. In
the literature we found six factors contributing to OGD engagement: 1) democratic culture, 2) the
availability of supporting institutional arrangements, 3) the technical factors of OGD provision, 4) the
availability of citizens’ resources, 5) the influence of social relationships, and 6) citizens’ perceived
data quality. Some of these conditions and factors were found to be less important in the studied case,
namely citizens’ perceived ease of engagement and citizens’ perceived data quality. Moreover, we
found several new conditions that were not mentioned in the studied literature, namely: 1) citizens’
sense of urgency, 2) competition among citizen-led OGD engagement initiatives, 3) the diversity of
citizens’ skills and capabilities, and 4) the intensive use of social media. The difference between the
conditions and factors that played an important role in our case and those derived from our literature
review might be due to the type of OGD engagement that we studied, namely citizen-led engagement,
without any government involvement.
Research limitations/implications: The findings are derived using a single case study approach. Future
research can investigate multiple cases and compare the conditions and factors for citizen-led
engagement with OGD in different contexts.
Practical implications: The conditions and factors for citizen-led engagement with OGD have been
evaluated in practice and discussed with public managers and practitioners through interviews.
Governmental organizations should prioritize and stimulate those conditions and factors that enhance
OGD citizen engagement to create more value with OGD.
Originality/value: While some research on government-led engagement with OGD exists, there is
hardly any research on citizen-led engagement with OGD. This study is the first to develop a
conceptual model of necessary conditions and factors for citizen engagement with OGD. Furthermore,
we applied the developed multilevel conceptual model to a case study and gathered empirical
evidence of OGD engagement and its contributions to solving societal problems, rather than staying
at the conceptual level. This research can be used to investigate citizen engagement with OGD in other
cases and offers possibilities for systematic cross-case lesson-drawing.
Keywords: open data, open government data, engagement, citizens, conditions, factors, use
Article Type: Research paper