Open data maturity

A useful starting point for those who want to publish open data can be to undertake an open data maturity assessment, to assess how well prepared you are to publish open data

The Open Data Maturity Model can help organisations undertake this type of assessment. The model supports the assessment of operational and strategic activities around open data, provides guidance on potential areas for improvement, and helps organisations compare themselves against one another to highlight their respective strengths and weaknesses, adopt best practices and improve their processes. Organisations can use the model to set themselves appropriate goals based on their current maturity, resourcing and anticipated benefits.

Click here to start exploring the fully Open Data Maturity Model

The model consists of five themes:

• Data management processes — highlights data management and governance practices, such as building a process to support the release of data or developing and adopting standards for data, that are particularly relevant to open data.

• Knowledge and skills — considers whether staff have the necessary skills and expertise in a number of different areas, such as a common understanding of the value of open data and its application to the organisation and a strategic understanding, at a senior level, of how to use open data to further the goals of the organisation.

• Customer support and engagement — highlights the need to go beyond just making data available online, by supporting users with correctly interpreting and using that data.

• Investment and financial performance — explores considerations around ongoing investment in both people and infrastructure that support data publishing and use.

• Strategic oversight — highlights the need to ensure that an organisation's adoption of open data practices is closely aligned with its wider organisational objectives.

Each of these thematic areas is scored against five levels of maturity:

1. Initial — the desirable processes are non-existent or ad hoc, with no organisational oversight

2. Repeatable — processes are becoming refined and repeatable, but only within the scope of individual teams or projects. There are no organisational standards

3. Defined — processes are standardised within the organisation based on best practices identified internally or from external sources. Knowledge and best practices start to be shared internally. However the processes may still not be widely adopted

4. Managed — the organisation has widely adopted the standard processes and begins to monitor them using defined metrics

5. Optimising — the organisation is attempting to optimise and refine its process to increase efficiency within the organisation and, more widely, within its business sector

If you would like to undertake your own assessment, there are a couple of options available to you:

• a printable template to undertake your own assessment, which may be more appropriate for an in-person workshop setting.

• For those working independently, you may prefer to use Open Data Pathway — a free online tool, based on the Open Data Maturity Model, which will help you to determine your current open data maturity level.

For a deeper understanding of each theme in the open Data Maturity Model, please refer to our full research report.