# Linked Open Government Data: Still a Viable Option for Sharing and Integrating Public Data?
## 8 Discussion and Conclusions  
To address the paper's title question, _Are LOGD still a viable option for sharing and integrating public data_? we explored the three distinct yet complementary research questions outlined in Figure 1. This approach provided insights into the challenges and opportunities of adopting LD practices within the OGD context. RQ1 is divided into RQ1.1 and RQ1.2, providing an overall snapshot of the current landscape of LOGD. RQ1.1 reveals that the number of datasets served natively as RDF is low compared to the vast amount of government data produced. Only 2.4% of data is available in RDF across the 78 national portals analyzed and only five of them provide an active SPARQL endpoint. Question RQ1.2 suggests a deceleration of LOGD momentum. However, this fact can have a double reading. On the one hand, it seems to suggest a possible decrease for scholars in the perceived importance of LODs for OGD progress compared to the early years of the last decade. Alternatively, a more favorable interpretation may suggest that the consolidation of LODs within OGD research has reached a plateau, potentially leading researchers to explore other areas. In the opposite direction, in RQ3, we have shown evidence that LD practices have a noteworthy impact, especially on how governmental data is aggregated, and made searchable and accessible by catalogs, as primarily witnessed by the aggregation served by the European Data Portal (more than 1,600,000 datasets from 36 nations and 183 catalogs, made available in a harmonized access point). Apart from the impact on data catalogs, LD practices have affected national guidelines and have improved data interoperability, consolidating practices for sharing controlled vocabulary (i.e., via publication of SKOS terminology and thesauri) and fostering the adoption of transversal data models such as in the case of the Italian National Catalog of Data Semantics and the European Core Vocabularies. Notably, the influence of guidelines varies across nations. In the instances of Italy and Spain, the impact is discernible through the availability of datasets adhering to LD principles, as illustrated in Figure 2. Conversely, in the case of the German Federal Government, the impact is characterized more as a visionary pursuit rather than an immediate, tangible outcome, as evidenced by the low number of RDF distributions in the German data portal. The LD approach enables the retention of the original semantics and carries forward the choices made in data modeling. This makes data consolidation and interpretation more reliable, as information can be handled more consciously and coherently. However, the contrast emerging from RQ1 and RQ3 finds an explanation in the frictions still present and analyzed in RQ2 and tensions that need to be balanced. The first tension is between voluntary efforts vs well-funded coordinated efforts. _Data activism_, as advocated by some LD enthusiasts, must be encouraged, but the generation of high-quality data cannot rely solely on activism. Some public administrations already allocate resources for producing and processing quality data; the key is to adopt technologies that efficiently leverage existing funding, unlocking the data's full potential. The second tension revolves around the effort required for _publishing versus consuming data_. The potential of LD to break down data silos, integrate information from diverse sources, and establish value chains that enhance the access and reuse of public data clashes with two conflicting interests. On one hand, providing LD semantically has the potential to simplify user searches and the comprehension of government datasets, thereby encouraging their reuse without the need for creating more complex mashup applications.