Public Draft Of The Open Data Maturity Model

Leigh Dodds

In partnership with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), the ODI has been developing a maturity model to help assess how effective organisations are at publishing and consuming open data.

We are pleased to launch a public draft of the model and invite feedback on it from the wider community.

Last year we announced the start of a project to develop an open data maturity model. Funded through the Release of Data Fund, the project aims to support organisations in mapping out their open data journey and comparing their progress with others. The model will be of immediate value to Defra in implementing its open data strategy, but the aim has always been to develop a model that can be applied by a wide range of organisations.

Since November we’ve run a series of requirements workshops to explore this idea in more detail with representatives from 10 different organisations, including members of the Defra network and the wider open data community.

The results have been used to create a maturity model that will help organisations assess their maturity as both publishers and reusers of open data in several areas:

  • Data management processes
  • Knowledge and skills
  • Customer support and engagement
  • Investment and financial performance
  • Strategy and governance

The draft model consists of two components:

  • An assessment grid that identifies the key elements of the model and the steps towards maturity.
  • An supporting guidance document that provides more detail on the structure of the model, the activities described in the grid and some notes on how to undertake an assessment.

The documents are at a stage where we would like to invite input from the open data community.

We’d welcome all feedback, but are particularly interested in knowing whether:

  • the model covers the right elements of assessing maturity,
  • the guidance includes the right amount of detail and supporting notes, or
  • the results you get from assessing your organisation seem reasonable.

Please read through both documents and let us know your thoughts. It might be useful to read some of the introductory parts of the guide before reviewing the grid and other guidance in more detail.

You can comment on the documents directly or if you’d prefer then email your feedback to [email protected].

Our aim is to deliver a final version of the model by the end of March. So please provide your feedback by Friday, 13 March.

In the meantime, we will be starting the second phase of the project which focuses on developing an assessment tool to support people in using the model.