ABSTRACT
The role institutions play in mobilising open data and their position in that mobilisation are key aspects in the development of open data. As the discussion in Chapter Four shows, institutions act in response to the drivers that are pushing for open data and they are key actors in overseeing and implementing a range of changes to facilitate the development of open data. Institutions are also situated within other broader changes that affect how they operate, which include the significant changes in systems for generating, sharing, and disputing human knowledge using digital technologies (Edwards et al. 2011). As outlined in Chapter Two, the way knowledge is generated has changed over historical time and the shift to Mode 2 Knowledge Production means that it is now becoming an increasingly large-scale, global, interdisciplinary, collaborative effort organised around open data sharing. Part of that change is the way digital technologies, including formal university and research centre systems as well as open public systems and platforms such as social media, crowd-based knowledge phenomenon such as Wikipedia as well as big data, have enabled new ways of producing and circulating ‘knowledge’. In general terms, this includes shifting to less-centralised forms of knowledge production and circulation. This has had an effect on the ecosystem and the way that institutions interrelate.
