Governments around the world are increasingly looking for ways to harness the potential of open data for improved policy-making, and social, economic and environmental benefit. A lot of work has been done to familiarise governments with open data and help them to publish open data.
There has been less focus on the longer-term process of embedding open data as standard practice and how that might happen. Ensuring your open data initiative is sustainable is essential to start to realise the impact of open data.
The ODI is exploring how organisational change within government happens to support and sustain open data in the long-term. Through extensive interviews and examination of the literature surrounding organisational change management, the ODI has developed guidance for policy-makers who have been tasked with implementing their own open data initiatives.
Thinking about the process of change management from the beginning of your initiative will be essential to realising the social, environmental and economic benefits of open data.
This work was supported by the Partnership for Open Data, funded by the World Bank.
Translations of this report are available below in Arabic, French, Russian, simplified Chinese Mandarin and Spanish.