Open government data (OGD) initiatives have become an important part of digital transformation strategies and a means for supporting digital entrepreneurship. However, several studies have shown that OGD is experiencing major barriers or even a standstill in certain countries. Little is known about what public managers think of OGD and what uses they ascribe to it. Accordingly, our paper tries to shed some light on the cognitive structures of public managers. Using the RepGrid technique as empirical method and affordance theory as theoretical grounding, our study explores how public managers working in different branches and levels of government interpret and make sense of OGD. Our findings allow for a better understanding of how managers comprehend OGD as concept and to what extent they share the same vision regarding how to re-use OGD in different application domains.