A systematic review of open government data initiatives

We conduct a systematic survey with the aim of assessing open government data initiatives, that is; any attempt, by a government or otherwise, to open data that is produced by a governmental entity. We describe the open government data life-cycle and we focus our discussion on publishing and consuming processes required within open government data initiatives. We cover current approaches undertaken for such initiatives, and classify them. A number of evaluations found within related literature are discussed, and from them we extract challenges and issues that hinder open government initiatives from reaching their full potential. In a bid to overcome these challenges, we also extract guidelines for publishing data and provide an integrated overview. This will enable stakeholders to start with a firm foot in a new open government data initiative. We also identify the impacts on the stakeholders involved in such initiatives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.