A comparison of geovisualizations and data tables for transparency enablement in the open government data landscape

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed progress of public institutions in making their datasets available online, free of charge, for re-use. There have been however limited studies which assess the actual effectiveness of different communication media in making key facts visible to citizens. This article analysed and systematically compared two representations which are relevant in the context of open government data: geovisualizations and data tables. An empirical user study (N=16) revealed that both types of representations have their strengths: geovisualizations make spatial knowledge and the attractiveness of open government data more visible, while data tables are more adequate for the communication of numerical data. The ideas presented are relevant to open data publishers interested in strategies to effectively put the hidden knowledge in current open government datasets into the hands of citizens.