Tailoring open government data portals for lay citizens: A gamification theory approach

Government policies focused on Open Government Data (OGD) often aim to stimulate the provision of public, interoperable data towards any user, including lay citizens, through online portals. However, these OGD portals are mostly developed for expert users. This hinders the realization of critical values such as transparency, empowerment, and equality of access. Following a Design Science Research approach, this study aims to examine how gamification can help tailor OGD portals for lay citizens. As a pre-condition to this goal, we identify re-quirements toward OGD portals through twenty interviews with experts and lay citizens. Compared to expert users, lay citizens expect an OGD portal with a more playful interface, vulgarized content, customized visuali-zations, and transparency-related datasets in a human-readable format. Second, we develop our research artifact, the OGD portal prototype, implementing fifteen design propositions using gamification theory to address lay citizens' requirements. Third, the evaluation with ten lay citizens reveals the perceived usefulness of the design propositions. Badges were evaluated as most useful to highlight portal relevance. This study contributes to OGD theory development by identifying lay citizens' requirements towards OGD use. Furthermore, this study is the first to reveal the usefulness of implementing notions from gamification theory into OGD portal design. Finally, practitioners can use our findings to make OGD portals more inclusive and thus contribute to attaining key OGD policy objectives.

Automated summary

This study aims to tailor Open Government Data (OGD) portals for lay citizens using the gamification approach. Through interviews with experts and lay citizens, the requirements of lay citizens towards OGD portals were identified. Fifteen design propositions were implemented using gamification theory to meet these requirements. The evaluation with lay citizens revealed the perceived usefulness of the design propositions, with badges being the most useful design proposition for highlighting portal relevance. This study contributes to the development of OGD theory and provides practical insights for improving OGD portals.