Stewardship of open government data - concepts and corresponding roles in practice

As the governance of open government data evolves the concept of data stewardship (DS) for open government data (OGD) is gaining traction both in grey and academic literature. At the same time, roles have emerged that may be described as open data stewards through combining tasks of internal data management, the facilitation of open data publication and external engagement and thus catering to several stakeholders. This paper aims to shed light on the concept of DS in OGD through the public domain and on the existence of formalized roles that enact such DS. We provide insights on DS by bringing together findings from literature on the OGD sector, the research data community and the private sector. Furthermore we conduct a content analysis on role descriptions from open data providing government organisations' websites in English and German speaking countries. Our results indicate that organisations in OGD employ roles that ensure DS on several levels and that stretch beyond typical roles found in research, using different role titles. While the priorities of roles predominantly entail responsibilities within the organization also external-facing tasks arise, indicating a stewardship for multiple stakeholders.