Stavanger Smart City Initiative: The Utilization of Open Data Enforces Innovation

Abstract

Many governments and municipalities are implementing smart solutions to their cities. Open data is a term used to describe sets of information published in a portal to be publicly available and free to utilize, reuse, and distribute. Many data sets are collected and published in the open data portal. However, the benefits contained in the open data are still facing the challenges to reap open its full potential. Therefore, with the implementation of open data, Stavanger municipality is expecting an increase in public participation of the smart city initiative.

However, the utilization of open data is as a topic of research is still nascent with little research having been conducted to date. Open data as a smart city initiative has limited research established in Norway. The author of this thesis has organized and conducted an explanatory case study with in-depth semi-structured interviews. The thesis implements this method in order to examine how open data enforces innovation. Hence, it mainly discusses the exploitation of open data that can enforce innovation discussed in the supply and demand for open data. The supply and demand entail the management of open data and how to entice public participation and what factors should be emphasized to unlock the potential of open data for innovation. Moreover, the positive and negative aspects of implementing open data partake in this discussion. These entail theme such as the challenges risen from the application of smart city and also the betterment which the public can benefit from open data as the implementation of a smart city in Stavanger Municipality.