The contradicting view about user groups relation to innovation – the European open data case

This study set out to investigate how user groups and their relation to impacts within open data phenomena were being portrayed in two levels of official EU documents; policy documents and a set of topic reports. Specifically, we also searched for implications thereof on the believed scene for open data based innovations. Findings reveal highly contradicting views of user groups, where the policy documents mainly explicitly acknowledged user groups belonging to the ICT sector and drawing on economic values. The topic reports on the other hand presented a much more diverse picture of open data users, as ranging from various sectors and with a broader engagement in the realisation process than mere re-use. These differences were seen to be fuelled by myths about new ICT at the policy level, which also infused a range of possible implications for a future innovation scene based on open data re-use. In particular, possible implications were found in four areas; 1) what user groups were acknowledged, 2) what parts of the realisation process users engaged in, 3) what skills where deemed important, and, 4) what impact user groups were aiming for. Also, this provides implications for how open data success is measured and evaluated.