Collaborative Construction of an Open Official Gazette

Given the potential use of open data and the obstacles for implementing Open Government Data OGD initiatives, this paper aims at describing the strategies adopted for preparing the implementation of an open Official Gazette at the municipal level. It is important to emphasize the potential value of the Official Gazette as a source of information, since it is perhaps the most detailed and comprehensive report the society can have on government daily activities. However, the data are mostly unstructured, and this fact, combined with the size of the database, makes any attempt to analyze it a non-trivial matter. Publishing the Official Gazette as OGD certainly does not address all the problems related to its use, but hopefully barriers can be overcome to allow more groups to make use of it. In this paper, three research methods are combined; a bibliographical review, documentary research, and direct observation. This paper describes the strategies and activities put into effect by a public body and an academic group in preparing the implementation of the open Official Gazette. It also analyses the outcomes of these strategies and activities by examining the tool implemented, the traffic and the reported uses of the Open Gazette. The paper concludes by reflecting on the main challenges that are raised in implementing open data initiatives at a local level in a developing country, and proposing an agenda for future research.