The Challenges of Open Data Movement for Education: What is the Say of Young Employees and Students in Croatia?

Abstract

This paper aims to shed light on how students and young employees in Croatia assess their education for open data and what is their opinion on the compliance of the central Open Data Portal with the needs of young people as well as how they evaluate open data policy related to the young people in Croatia. This research highlights the lack of technical knowledge as a serious obstacle to the productive use of open data. As many as 56% of respondents from companies that have undergone digital transformation believe that they do not have enough knowledge to participate in open data projects, and the same scepticism is expressed by 59.6% of non-technical respondents and 45.7% of students. The data presented in this paper is part of a broader empirical research on the impact of digitalization on the transformation of the Croatian economy, carried out by the author in late 2018 on a sample of 51 young employees from 10 companies in the city of Zagreb and 70 students from 16 technical and non-technical Faculties of Zagreb University.