Two articles by Assistant professor and researcher Anastasija Nikiforova have been published in Q1 journal "Telematics and Informatics"

The article “Transparency-by-design: what is the role of open data portals?” has been written in collaboration with Martin Lnenicka, the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic. The purpose of the article is to determine the role of open data portals in the transparency-by-design concept. The concept of “transparency” in the public sector is one of the most important topics on the way to responsible, responsive and participatory governance. Given that open government data plays an important role in this matter, the open government data portal, which is an infrastructure where the open government data are published in one place, allowing all the stakeholder and the organisation to access and re-use them, is seen as a tool that could contribute to it.

The topic is interesting and also challenging because the nature of the open government data portal is fundamentally different from the structure of other websites and the more complex tasks, given the diversity of aspects that need to be viewed from a wide variety of perspectives. The article defined a list of categories that would promote transparency of open management data portals, including a series of features for each category that were retrieved from the literature, conducting an in-depth analysis and identifying “good practices” examples. Each feature was also linked to the respective actor. Defined categories were mapped to the so-called “transparency cycle” phases introduced by Martin Janssen, a leading researcher of open government data. Defined features are those that should be taken into account by holders of the open government data portal, publishers and users of open government data, affecting overall “transparency”, potentially capable of affecting the quality of the entire ecosystem of open government data and the e-government.

For full-text, see - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736585321000447 

Lnenicka M., Nikiforova A. (2021) Transparency-by-design: What is the role of open data portals?, Telematics and Informatics, Volume 61, 2021, 101605, ISSN 0736-5853, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2021.101605.

The “Open Government Data Portal Usability: A User-Centred Usability Analysis of 41 Open Government Data Portals” article is dedicated to an analysis of the usability of the 41 open government data portals. This article is an extended version of the conference paper “Comparative analysis of national open data portals or whether your portal is ready to bring benefits from open data” presented by assistant professor Anastasia Nikiforova at IADIS International Conference on ICT, Society and Human Beings. This article has been written in collaboration with the post-doctoral student of Hertie School Centre for Digital Governance (Germany) Keegan McBride.

The study presented is a comparative analysis of 41 OGD portals, using the single framework carried out involving 40 participants. A total of 1640 individual protocols were produced, the results of which allowed the assessment of 14 aspects of each portal and the identification of portals with better results, i.e. which could be used as examples for improving it. In the presence of a number of indexes assessing the maturity of different government data, in some cases also addressing the analysis of portals, the data on which are obtained from open management data providers or stakeholders, this assessment is user-driven, so that the assessment is based on the views of end-users when assessing whether a specific aspect is present and, if it is, how user-friendly it has been implemented. The resulting protocols, together with their aggregation by category, aspect, etc., are available to the public, thereby also supporting the principles of “open science”. The study also involved students of the “Open Data and Data Quality” created and delivered by assistant professor Anastasija Nikiforova. The results of this study have also interested holders of Latvian Open Data Portal.

For full-text, please refer to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736585320301982?casa_token=5E7EBFMR1s0AAAAA:eqp2V1M6uUsqR9wA26aNeTXrCy3h6mQg2Qv_TwUD1O1IEXh1QFBWMlT-6j8nfRMO-Bf_WPoWwg 

Nikiforova, A., & McBride, K. (2021) Open government data portal usability: A user-centred usability analysis of 41 open government data portals. Telematics and Informatics, 58, 101539. 

The co-authors of both articles have led to an interest in cooperation, based on the results of previous studies presented in 2020 at the “IADIS International Conference on ICT, Society and Human Beings” (“Comparative analysis of national open data portals or whether your portal is ready to bring benefits from open data”, author: A. Ņikiforova) and 14th International Conference on Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction” (“Assessment of the usability of Latvia’s open data portal or how close are we to gaining benefits from open data”, author: A. Ņikiforova).