The moderating effect of external pressure on the relationship between internal organizational factors and the quality of open government data

Open government data (OGD) have important political, economic, and social values that are highly valued by many countries around the world. These data represent the cross-boundary information sharing practices between governments and the public. Therefore, this paper investigates OGD by following the theory and practice of cross-boundary information sharing. Most of the current studies have focused on OGD platform, whereas this study has focused on individual government departments and datasets. From the perspective of public data users, we constructed an evaluation index to measure OGD quality, which reflected the degree of cross-boundary information sharing between the governments and the public. We specifically concentrated on the external environment of OGD and selected 128 government departments in Shanghai, Beijing, and Wuhan in China as samples. We found that institutional capacity is an important factor for OGD quality of individual government departments. However, technology capacity and organization arrangement demonstrated small significance for OGD quality. The pressure from the public and higher-level government departments can moderate the relationship between institutional capacity and OGD quality. These results can guide governments in prioritizing the improvement of OGD quality and implementing an OGD project.