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The value of data as a new economic asset class is seldom realized on its own. With less reliance on self-administered survey, it offers new insights into behaviors and patterns. Yet it is a huge undertaking of bringing together multiple actors from different disciplines and diverse practices to examine the underexplored relationships between types of data. There are different inquiry systems and research cycles to make sense out of big and open data (BOLD). We argue that deploying theories from diverse disciplines and considering using different inquiry systems and research cycles offers a more disciplined and robust methodological approach. This allows us to break through the limits of backward induction from the evidence by moving back and forward in exploring the unknown through BOLD. As such, we call for developing a variety of rigorous approaches to counterbalance the current practice in theory-free approach in the analysis and use of BOLD., Engineering, Systems and Services, Technology, Policy and Management

Information infrastructures of businesses and government are increasingly interwoven and highly dependent on each other. Though often referred to as sociotechnical innovations, the development of these information infrastructures often has a technological focus. The related and even concurrent development of new social practices is understudied. As a result, the social innovation taking place next to the development of large-scale information infrastructures is ill understood. To address this gap, we study public-private information infrastructure developments at three layers and over a prolonged period of time and focus on the innovation in the social practices. Our goal is to understand the social innovation that is taking place within and among these layers and within their technological context. A finding was that stakeholders face changes in their existing practices and have to alter them as a pre-condition to realize the benefits that information infrastructures promise to provide. New social practices need to be developed and sustaining the innovation requires the development of governance mechanisms., Multi Actor Systems, Technology, Policy and Management

Although a significant number of public organizations have embraced the idea of open data, many are still reluctant to do this. One root cause is that the publicizing of data represents a shift from a closed to an open system of governance, which has a significant impact upon the relationships between public agencies and the users of open data. Yet no systematic research is available which compares the benefits of an open data with the barriers to its adoption. Based on interviews and a workshop, the benefits and adoption barriers for open data have been derived. The findings show that a gap exists between the promised benefits and barriers. They furthermore suggest that a conceptually simplistic view is often adopted with regard to open data, one which automatically correlates the publicizing of data with use and benefits. Five ‘myths’ are formulated promoting the use of open data and placing the expectations within a realistic perspective. Further, the recommendation is given to take a user’s view and to actively govern the relationship between government and its users., ICT, Technology, Policy and Management