Open Government Data as a Service (GoDaaS): Big Data Platform for Mobile App Developers

Abstract

The next web of open and linked data leverages governmental data openness to improve the quality of social services. This data is a national asset. In this study, we elaborate on this emerging open government movement, together with the underlying data transparency to drive novel business models which utilize these assets under a functioning platform called Open Government Data as a Service (GoDaaS). These business models actively engage civic-minded programmers in developing sustainable applications, contextualizing and utilizing the government open data resources. This leads to an expansive government marketplace, with many civic-minded developers might be new to doing business with the federal or state government. By means of a consultation service prototype, we provide development advices for programmers on how to work out the specific details of their applications business model. Having the business models in focus, this study also proposes a novel abstraction unit called Gov. Data Compute Unit (DCU), so that governments are able to feed developers with formalized, structured and programmable data resource units rather than just data catalogs. Such DCUs enable developers to cope with an increasing heterogeneity of state government data sets, by providing a unified interface on top of diverse data schemata from various states.