Linked Open Government Data Analytics

Although the recently launched Open Government Data (OGD) movement promised to provide a number of benefits, recent studies have shown that its full potential has not yet realized. The difficulty in exploiting open data seems surprising if we consider the huge importance data have in modern societies. In this paper we claim that the real value of OGD will unveil from performing data analytics on top of combined statistical datasets that were previously closed in disparate sources and can now be linked to provide unexpected and unexplored insights. To support this claim, we describe the linked OGD analytics concept along with its technical requirements and demonstrate its end-user value employing a use case related to UK general elections. The use case revealed that there is a significant relationship between the probability one of the two main political parties (i.e. Labour Party and Conservative Party) to win in a UK constituency and the unemployment rate in the same constituency.