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Maturity and usability of open data in North Rhine-Westphalia

We examine the actual state of open government in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany, regarding the infrastructure for publishing open data. The overall state is measured with the Open Data Barometer. Furthermore, we analyse the distribution of file formats, dataset licenses and dataset categories of published open data in NRW. Since the Open Government Pact in NRW was established, the interest in open data and its platforms is increasing. In the last years many new platforms were subsequently deployed. Two most commonly used underlying platforms for publishing open data are DKAN and CKAN. Our goal is to elaborate usability concerns of CKAN and DKAN and formulate recommendations to improve their usability. We conduct a usability study with new users to measure the usability of the platforms and carry out an expert survey with open data maintainers to identify room for improvement. Our research provides evidence that NRW is on par with Germany in the implementation and distribution of open data and that a common open data strategy on a regional level is missing. It also points out that CKAN provides a superior user experience for new users and experienced maintainers compared to DKAN. We further determine critical usability concerns and provide recommendations to improve the usability of CKAN and DKAN.