Exploring Estonia's Open Government Data Development as a Journey towards Excellence: Unveiling the Progress of Local Governments in Open Data Provision

Estonia has a global reputation of a digital state or e-country. However, despite the success in digital governance, the country has faced challenges in the realm of Open Government Data (OGD) area, with significant advancements in its OGD ecosystem, as reflected in various open data rankings from 2020 and onwards, in the recent years being recognized among trend-setters. This paper aims to explore the evolution and positioning of Estonia's OGD development, encompassing national and local levels, through an integrated analysis of various indices, primary data from the Estonian OGD portal, and a thorough literature review. The research shows that Estonia has made progress in the national level open data ecosystem, primarily due to improvements in the OGD portal usability and legislation amendments. However, the local level is not as developed, with local governments lagging behind in OGD provision. The literature review highlights the lack of previous research focusing on Estonian and European local open data, emphasizing the need for future studies to explore the barriers and enablers of municipal OGD. This study contributes to a nuanced understanding of Estonia's dynamic journey in the OGD landscape, shedding light on both achievements and areas warranting further attention for establishing a sustainable open data ecosystem.