A Stakeholders Taxonomy for Opening Government Data Decision-Making

Stakeholders can have different views on the opening of data, and conflicts may arise between them. Several causes of disputes may arise during the decision-making process due to the diverse objectives, interests, and needs among the stakeholders that perceive their desires. Yet, no stakeholder taxonomy exists to guide this decision-making process. Direct and indirect stakeholders include open data providers, software developers, data scientists, privacy experts, decision-makers, users, open data evangelists, software developers, policy-makers and politicians. Using an iterative process, a stakeholders taxonomywas developed by classifying stakeholders based on their varying levels and views on openness. The taxonomy includes unaware, unknowledgeable, resistant, risk-averse, neutral, supportive, expert, champion, and leading roles. Each stakeholder proposes a unique mix of expertise, legitimacy, sense of urgency, perceived possible benefits, and risks. The stakeholder's taxonomy can help to improve the adoption of the decision-making process to open data.