Open data policies, as well as e-government policies, are usually associated with many promises that range from transparency to efficiency gains for the public administration. However, how...Show moreOpen data policies, as well as e-government policies, are usually associated with many promises that range from transparency to efficiency gains for the public administration. However, how effective these policies are in meeting the (high) expectations of practitioners, politicians, and citizens is a topic of debate. In this thesis we focus on the Italian case, in which transparency is often evoked as a solution to many societal problems, to investigate the relationship between transparency and institutional and organizational features of local governments. The thesis also introduces the concept of open data mediated transparency as a way to complement the concept of open government. Open data mediated transparency aims at capturing how open data sharing through the Italian National Open data portal translates into transparency. To measure this concept, this study uses the four dimensions of governmental transparency developed by the Pew Institute and adapts them to the Italian case. The following question is central in this thesis: what are the institutional and organizational factors that influence open data mediated transparency in Italian local governments? Objectives: This thesis has three research objectives. First, the thesis aims to assess the implementation of open data initiatives in Italian municipalities through the attainment of transparency goals. Second, the study wishes to improve our understanding of the open data phenomenon in the context of Italian local administration. The final goal of this thesis is to investigate institutional and organizational factors that might influence how transparent Italian local administrations are and, therefore, how open data policies are implemented in Italy. Methods: The study is based on a quantitative deductive approach. A Poisson regression is used to test the different hypotheses. Key findings: The results of the analysis show that there is no support for population size, level of education of the personnel of the public administration, organizational resistance, and political affiliation as factors that affects open data mediated transparency. Overall, open data mediated transparency varies greatly among municipalities with few local administrations sharing transparent and relevant datasets. The results are discussed and lead to suggestions for future research and policy recommendations.Show less
This report describes the results of the research in the context of the Master's degree in Cyber Security. This study researched the problem that public tenders contain information that can be...Show moreThis report describes the results of the research in the context of the Master's degree in Cyber Security. This study researched the problem that public tenders contain information that can be collected by hackers during their preparation for a cyber-attack. Adversaries can easily access this information and abuse it against the tendering organizations. Therefore, the main goal of this research is to establish guidelines aimed at identifying and reducing sensitive information in tenders, in order to prevent that malicious parties gather and use this information in the preparation of cyber-attacks against tendering organizations. To this end, the various concepts of open data, procurement, reconnaissance, cyber kill chain, and open source intelligence were examined. In addition, interviews were held to both identify the risks for tendering organizations due to the above identified problem and to evaluate on the established guidelines. The research results have shown that the information in tenders is public due to the principles on which the rules regarding tenders are based. This is to offer fair opportunities to companies to win contracts through tenders. Due to the public nature of information in tenders, the comparison can be made with the concept of open data. As a result, the risks inherent to open data, such as abuse by malicious parties, also apply to information in tenders.Further research into the reconnaissance activities of hackers has made it clear that hackers are looking for specific types of information in preparation for cyber-attacks. It has been determined through document analysis on real tenders and interviews with security professionals that these types of information occur in tenders. This means that malicious parties can use tenders to collect information about organizations that is relevant for the preparation of cyber-attacks, against the tendering organizations. As a result, the tendering organizations face risks with regard to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of company assets. In particular, the likelihood that such risks arise is increased because the information is easily accessible to malicious parties. In order to prevent this, guidelines have been established. These guidelines should be used in follow-up research where a final solution is created that implements the described functionalities of the guidelines. The established guidelines focus in particular on identifying and reducing information that is relevant to hackers in tenders, before the tenders are made public. In this way the risks for tendering organizations can be prevented because this information can no longer be collected by malicious parties. The likelihood of the identified risks occurring is reduced. In addition, techniques have been suggested for these guidelines on which they can be implemented.The techniques regular expressions, text mining, comparison with known information, optical character recognition, and image recognition are discussed. Furthermore, guidelines have also been established that focus on the practical side of a final solution and the fact that this solution must be used in an existing context: people, processes and organizations. The guidelines and the results of the study were evaluated in interviews with senior purchasers. From these interviews it can be concluded that a solution based on the guidelines is of added value in practice in order to reduce sensitive information in tenders and prevent risks for tendering organizations. The results of this research thus result in recommendations for follow-up research, where the aim is to create an automated solution based on the guidelines that have been established.Show less
