Exploring the economic value of open government data

Business models for open data have emerged in response to the economic opportunities presented by the increasing availability of open data. However, scholarly efforts providing elaborations, rigorous analysis and comparison of open data models are very limited. This could be partly attributed to the fact that most discussions on Open Data Business Models (ODBMs) are predominantly in the practice community. This shortcoming has resulted in a growing list of ODBMs which, on closer examination, are not clearly delineated and lack clear value orientation. This has made the understanding of value creation and exploitation mechanisms in existing open data businesses difficult and challenging to transfer. Following the Design Science Research (DSR) tradition, we developed a 6-Value (6-V) business model framework as a design artifact to facilitate the explication and detailed analysis of existing ODBMs in practice. Based on the results from the analysis, we identify business model patterns and emerging core value disciplines for open data businesses. Our results not only help streamline existing ODBMs and help in linking them to the overall business strategy, but could also guide governments in developing the required capabilities to support and sustain the business models.