Open Government Data: Usage trends and metadata quality

Open Government Data (OGD) have the potential to support social and economic progress. However, this potential can be frustratedif these data remain unused. Although the literature suggests that OGD data sets' metadata quality is one of the main factorsaffecting their use, to the best of our knowledge, no quantitative study provided evidence of this relationship. Considering about400,000 data sets of 28 national, municipal and international OGD portals, we have programmatically analysed their usage, their metadataquality and the relationship between the two. Our analysis has highlighted three main findings. First, regardless of their size, thesoftware platform adopted, and their administrative and territorial coverage, most OGD data sets are underutilised. Second, OGDportals pay varying attention to the quality of their data sets' metadata. Third, we did not find clear evidence that data sets' usage ispositively correlated to better metadata publishing practices. Finally, we have considered other factors, such as data sets' category,and some demographic characteristics of the OGD portals, and analysed their relationship with data sets' usage, obtaining partiallyaffirmative answers.