Beyond standards and regulations: Obstacles to local open government data initiatives in Italy and France

Despite national and supranational directives and growing interest in the potential of data-driven analysis, the majority of local public administrations have failed to implement progressive open government data (OGD) agendas. The aim of this study was to collect anecdotal evidence about how local public administrations (PAs) in Italy and France have initiated OGD agendas, what difficulties they have encountered, and how they have tackled them. A literature review covering a wide range of legal, social and technical obstacles that hinder OGD agendas is combined with observations gleaned from 14 interviews about local OGD initiatives in Italy and France. While anecdotes are far from being a complete representation of reality, they may nuance our understanding of the dynamics involved in changing information management within public administrations. The study’s qualitative approach led to the emergence of three key results: the importance of cultural factors in organisational change; the need for further research about implementation costs, economic and social impact, and privacy issues; and the lack of efforts devoted to understanding the perspective of users.