An architecture for monitoring public educational policies based on big open linked data

Open government data (OGD) is increasingly being deployed in many countries. It is often considered a pillar of democracy by providing society with transparency and accountability for public policies and actions. However, the role of OGD in policy-making monitoring has been explored only marginally due to its complexity and inter-organizational boundaries. Big Open Linked Data (BOLD) is a recent technological approach where data from multiple institutions with different data governance policies must be integrated to achieve a common goal. In this approach, linked data is essential in providing tools and practices to merge and analyze these data. In this work, we present a BOLD infrastructure to support the monitoring of an educational public policy using a linked data approach. The design science research methodology (DSR-M) was followed in this study. We chose the PNE (National Education Plan) as an illustrative scenario since it sets out goals for national education at different levels and perspectives for ten years. We used its goals and indicators to elicit requirements and evaluate the architecture. As a result, we created an infrastructure based on virtual knowledge graphs at a municipality level and used it to generate detailed and transparent statistics on calculating the goals. Finally, we highlight some implications and future challenges of our approach.