7. Conclusion
The objectives of this study are to investigate the necessary conditions for the emergence of citizenled engagement with OGD and to identify which factors stimulate this type of engagement. Hence,
the study provides insights into how citizen-led engagement with OGD emerges. We reviewed the
open data literature particularly concerning conditions and factors of OGD citizen engagement and
developed a conceptual model of conditions and factors at three different levels: societal,
organizational, and individual. Then, we applied the conceptual model to a case study of the 2014
presidential election in Indonesia in which citizens developed and used a platform based on open
election data to digitize and monitor election results.
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.
The scientific contributions of this study are twofold. First, we developed a conceptual model of
conditions and factors related to citizen-led engagement with OGD from the literature. This model can
be used by other OGD researchers and can function to study citizen-led engagement in another
context, such as cases in other countries. Our model can also be used to compare citizen-led
engagement to other types of engagement (e.g., government-led engagement) and to better
understand how these different types of engagement with OGD relate to each other. Second, we
carried out an empirical case study of citizen-led engagement. Citizen-led engagement is rarely studied
in the open data literature compared to other types of OGD engagement, such as government-led
engagement and co-production engagement. Our study contributes to filling this knowledge gap.
The societal contributions of this study are as follows. From our case study, we derived insight into
how citizen-led engagement emerges, more specifically under what conditions it emerges and which
factors contribute to citizen-led engagement. OGD policymakers should prioritize and stimulate those
conditions and factors that enhance OGD citizen engagement to create more value with OGD.
Furthermore, they should be used in the development of government open data policies.
Conditions and factors comprising the proposed conceptual model may change over time and this may
lead to the emergent needs for adjustment and refinement in other contexts. Our findings are based
on a single case study from a particular country with interviews as the main source of information.
Whether our findings also apply to other cases needs to be examined case-by-case. New avenues for
future research in citizen engagement can emerge. We recommend further research to evaluate our
proposed conceptual model of conditions and factors in government-led or co-production settings
and compare the results with this study. Moreover, cross-country cases will be fruitful for generating