OPEN LEGISLATION: COMPARISON OF LEGAL PORTALS IN THREE COUNTRIES

The digital transformation has affected people's lives, businesses, and the public sector. Large amounts of information and data from various sources have become available to the public (Jetzek et al., 2012). Nowadays, data plays a significant role in people's lives. Data has become the most critical driver of the digital age. Moreover, the public sector produces an enormous amount of data and information that are an extremely valuable resource and fuel that offers society an opportunity to drive tremendous economic and social change (Charalabidis et al., 2018). In spite of that, the opening of data by public organizations and public bodies has happened lately. Over the past few years, many governments have become driven and influenced by open data policies and have instructed their public organizations and public bodies to enable the release of public sector information and data (van Loenen et al., 2018). That has immensely increased the amount of open data freely available to the public. Although public organizations have made available their data, the potential of open data (data that anyone can access, share, use, and re-use without any restrictions or barriers) to become an essential tool for growth, innovation, and data-driven products and services can only be utilized when shared and re-used without restrictions or charge for their (re)use (Welle Donker and van Loenen, 2017).