  Australia is among the leading countries that envisaged releasing
unclassified public data under open license and reusable format with no further
restriction on re/use. But, according to the Australian Information
Commissioner John McMillan, Australia's progress on open data is 'patchy' and
'transitional'. He also evidenced that although a few agencies are proactive
and have embraced the movements quite seriously, still there are "many
obstacles that worked against effort to make government information and data
discoverable and usable" (Hilvert 2013). Despondently, there is little
empirical evidence that could explain what makes public departments not to
release public data. Driven by the nature of the research, this study conducted
an exploratory field study in Australia by interviewing eleven employees from
six different government agencies. Applying content analysis technique, this
study identifies six important antecedents to adoption of open data in public
organisations, and proposes future research to test their relationships. As the
main theoretical contribution, this study extends organisational behaviour
toward technology diffusion. The findings of this study incite policymakers and
managers to think about and prepare future strategies on open data
developments.
