The track serves as an umbrella for all e-Government (EGOV) and e-Governance-related topics except the special-topics tracks. E-Government research, recently know as Digital Government, has developed over the past decades into a mature discipline. In this track, EGOV foundations, theories and practices are explored. We solicit for a variety of research approaches. This track covers also emerging and special topics in e-Government research.
Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:
- Foundations of e-Government and e-Governance research
- E-Government theories, views, methods and frameworks
- Smart Government and Smart Governance
- Interdisciplinary approaches (e.g. intersection with other disciplines such as Information Systems, Computer Science, Public Administration)
- Innovation management, transformational government
- Digital Transformation in the public sector
- Smart Governance as enabler of transformation
- Digital government strategies
- Disruptive technologies in the public sector (e.g Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Ledger Technology/Blockchain, Internet of Things)
- Stakeholder and change management
- Strategies and policies for ICT-enabled public administration overhaul
- Policies and decision-making in government
- Data-driven decision and policy-making
- E-Government architectures (vertical, horizontal, and networked)
- Public administration back and front offices overhaul (cases, practices, lessons learned)
- Design approaches for ICT solutions in the public sector, including stakeholder engagement, citizen co-creation, and crowd sourcing
- Information governance (strategies, information sharing practices, privacy practices)
- Public sector CIOs and/or COOs (roles, impact, span of control, issues, and challenges)
- Public sector ICT workforce (management, retention, compensation, etc.)
- Public sector information management (challenges and opportunities, cases)
- Enterprise ICT management initiatives
- Managing and upgrading public sector legacy systems
- Intergovernmental integration and interoperation
- Safe public online access, inclusion, privacy and online identity management
- ICT portfolio management in the public sector
- ICT insourcing versus outsourcing approaches
- Integration of online and inline services (opportunities, challenges, case)
- Cross-jurisdictional alliances for online government services
- ICT-enabled transnational government collaboration
- Special topics (for example, emergency and disaster management, cybersecurity, etc.) and novel topics (for example, ICT4D, e-Justice, etc.)
- ICT-enabled critical infrastructure management, risks, and policies
- Public value management, transparency, risk management
- Geographical information systems in government
- e-Government project success and failure
- ICT usage, acceptance, measurement, benchmarking, and benefit management
- Online performance metrics for public services
- Return on investment and sustainability of ICT investments
Track Chairs
- Gabriela Viale Pereira, Danube University Krems, Austria (lead)
- Ida Lindgren, Linköping University, Sweden
- Hans Jochen Scholl, University of Washington, USA
The General e-Democracy & e-Participation track aims to present recent developments in electronic participation and digital engagement covering all relevant technical, political and social aspects.
E-Democracy and e-Participation and are multidisciplinary fields of study. They are particularly timely and relevant in various contexts focusing on issues such as participatory public service design engagement driven around open government data, social media interactions, engagement in co-design and co-delivery of services and several other top-down and bottom-up initiatives related to economic and welfare issues.
This track aims to bring together researchers from all disciplines interested in e-Democracy and e-Participation and to present and discuss new ideas, meet other researchers and practitioners and facilitate future collaborations. We welcome theoretical papers, qualitative and quantitative papers and case studies, and encourage authors to address challenges, analyses and elaborations on further developments.
Areas of focus and interest include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Foundations of e-Democracy and e-Participation research including theories, methods, models and approaches
- Participatory and communication platforms ICT, mobile media, social media and new forms of participation applications for citizens Living Labs
- Advances in participatory policy making using policy modeling, simulation, impact assessment and visualization methods and tools
- AI impact on democracy
- Digital interactions between citizens, businesses, governments, service providers and other stakeholders
- Advances in online deliberation and discourse, participatory budgeting, e-Consultation, e-Polling, and e-Legislation, e-Electioneering, e-Campaigning and e-Voting
- Public engagement around big and open data Sustainability of e-Democracy, e-Participation and citizen engagement good practices and key factors for success motivational factors and the impact of participation
- Transparency and open access
- Design and co-creation of participatory public services bottom-up initiatives
- The role of e-Democracy and e-Participation in national and global crisis situations
- Citizen inclusion and digital divide: gender, age, education, etc.
- New approaches to direct democracy, new forms of democracy enhanced by ICT and the impact of new technologies, in particular block chains, to the development of e-participation
- Inclusive e-Governance in the context of Regional Smart Specialization
- Sustainability of e-Democracy, e-Participation and citizen engagement good practices and key factors for success motivational factors and the impact of participation
- Digital literacy and its consequences for e-Democracy and e-Participation
- e-Democracy and e-Participation projects: design, implementation, evaluation, quality and impact
- Impact assessment and public value considerations in real world decision making
- Digital research methods and big data applications
- Comparative analyses of e-Democracy and e-Participation practices
- Critical perspectives: wrongdoings, bad experiences, hype but not reality, fringe groups
Track Chairs
- Noella Edelmann, Danube-University Krems, Austria (lead)
- Peter Parycek, Fraunhofer Fokus, Germany / Danube-University Krems, Austria
- Robert Krimmer, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
As the Fourth Industrial Revolution creates new tools for conducting economic activities in the private sector, it also provides the public sector with tools for creating public value and engaging in digital transformation. While ICT has been fundamental for digitalising public services, the public sector increasingly relies on Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), (Big) Data Analytics (BDA), Blockchain, 5G, Adaptive manufacturing / 3D technologies, wireless and related technologies to accelerate and increase the impact of digital transformation.
As citizens are spending more time on the Internet, their digital footprints are becoming easier to collect, forming massive interconnected networks of data. Innovative methods and tools to analyse such data and understand policy implications are in urgent demand. In particular, open data and open government initiatives can create bigger synergy and impact when integrated with new technologies.
However, the use of new technologies by government has some serious ethical and policy implications. Complementing or replacing human-made public service with AI, automating decisions of consequence to people’s lives, harvesting interconnected data about individuals, etc. raise the risk that exclusion, injustice and privacy violations can happen on a massive scale. Decision made through (Big) Data Analytics and policy modelling tool may generate optimal solutions from an economic perspective, but not from a social inclusion perspective, or give rise to transparency and fairness concerns. Privacy and security issues with regards to citizens’ everyday digital footprints also have legal and policy implications.
This track invites papers that can advance theoretical, practical and policy questions on those issues. Papers are expected to address the topics including but not limited to:
- Adoption of robotics-based public services
- AI and labour displacement in the public sector
- AI applications in the public sector
- AI and policy monitoring and analytics
- AI-enabled smart cities
- AI in government and discriminatory bias
- Big data analytics for policy modelling
- Co-creation via AI and big data analytics
- Computational analysis methods for open data
- Consequential decisions and AI in government
- Decision support system for policy makers
- Digital transformation via AI
- Disruptive services in public sector
- Impact of AI on social cohesion
- IoT applications in public services
- Privacy issues in big data analytics
- Qualitative policy modelling
- Quality of AI-enabled public services
Track Chairs
- Habin Lee (lead), Brunel University London, United Kingdom
- Euripidis Loukis, University of Aegean, Greece
- Evangelos Kalampokis, CERTH, Greece
A smart and connected community is a community that synergistically integrates intelligent technologies with the natural and built environments, including infrastructure, to improve the social, economic, and environmental well-being of those who live, work, or travel within it. The transformation of these communities has become a top priority for city governments and communities and offers great promise for improved wellbeing and prosperity but, also, poses significant challenges at the complex intersection of technology and society.
Although literature is rich in references to smart cities and communities and technology is a necessary condition to become smart, it is not the only one. In addition, the literature on smart cities and communities is fragmented, particularly in terms of the strategies that different cities and communities follow in order to become smarter. There is no one route to becoming smart and different territories have adopted different approaches that reflect their particular circumstances, mainly due to different levels of pressures suffered on housing, energy, transportation, infrastructure and healthcare due to rapid urbanisation and ageing populations. New innovations at the forefront of smart projects include Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, chatbots, open data, Internet of Things, or clean technologies to improve sustainability. All of them are being integrated into city administration and community management, information integration, data quality, privacy and security, institutional arrangements, and citizen participation, which are just some of the issues that need greater attention to make a community smarter today and in the near future. Smart services can also make our cities better but as digital technology and transformation evolves there are challenges as well as opportunities for both citizens and stakeholders.
This track aims at exploring these issues, paying particular attention to the challenges of smart cities and smart communities as well as to the impact of these initiatives. It also aims at focusing on the orchestrated interplay and balance of smart governance practices, smart public administration, smart communities, smart resources and talent leverage in urban, rural, and regional spaces facilitated by novel uses of ICT and other technologies.
As a result, areas of focus and interest to this track include, but are not limited, to the following topics:
- Smart governance as the foundation to creating smart urban and regional spaces (elements, prerequisites, and principles of smart governance)
- Smart government (focal areas, current practices, cases, and potential pitfalls)
- Smart partnerships and smart communities (triple/quadruple helix, public-private partnerships, and citizen participation)
- Smart cities and regions (cases, rankings, comparisons, and critical success factors)
- Collective intelligence for smart cities and communities
- Emerging technologies in smart communities (big data, open data, data analytics, social media and networks, Blockchain technologies, etc)
- AI and IoT as an enabler for Smart Communities/Smart Cities (infrastructure, transportation, citizen participation, education, governance, environment, health care, safety, security, and energy)
- AI in smart city design and operation
- Integrative research that addresses the technological and social dimensions of smart and connected communities
- Smart grids
- Smart environment and transportation (carbonless and clean individual and public mobility)
- Smart devices and their novel use in public management
- Smart (technology-facilitated) practices such as payment systems, identification systems, etc.
- New cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities in smart technologies
- SMART as a public-sector planning and management principle (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Results-based, and Time-bound)
- Smart university and education
- Quality of life issues in smart cities and smart communities
- Urban-rural gaps in smart communities
- Citizen participation in smart cities through the use of new technologies as chatbots or blockchain.
- Innovation and creativity in smart society development
Track Chairs
- Prof. Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar (Lead) University of Granada, Spain
- Prof. Karin Axelsson, Linköping University, Sweden
- Prof. Nuno Lopes, DTx: Digital Transformation Colab, Portugal
Digital and social media are central for government, public administration, democratic and political processes and communication. On the one hand, they are an increasingly important interface between governments, the public sector and their respective publics. On the other hand, they also play an important role for innovation in the public sector, improving public service delivery and providing opportunities for public participation.
Social media applications and digital tools have also reshaped the nature of collaboration within public organisations, across governance networks, impacting political communication and campaigning. Whilst social media are extensively used in politics and by political figures, public sector organisations still struggle to understand how best to use social media and to develop a social media strategy, how to implement them for operational activities and the digital transformation of the organisation, improve services and achieve change and strategic goals.
We invite relevant studies on social media in the public sector that draw on conceptual, case study, survey, mixed or other suitable methods.
Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:
- New theoretical perspectives and critical analyses of digital interactions
- Strategies and policies for the planning and implementation of social media
- Use and significance of social media analytics in political communication and public organisations
- Organisational issues relevant to the implementation of social media in democratic contexts and the transformation of public sector organisations
- Stakeholders and digital publics of government engagement on social media
- Enterprise/organisational networking and knowledge sharing applications
- Internal and informal digital networks in public sector organisations
- The role of social media in digital transformation
- The use of technology and social media for co-production, crowdsourcing, citizen-sourcing, co-creation and other crowd-based models (e.g. in regulation, bottom-up initiatives, open source movements)
- Mobilisation, social movements and other forms of digital engagement enabled by social media
- Social media in crisis and emergency management
- Ethical, privacy, regulatory and policy issues related to social media
- Evaluation of the impact of social media in various contexts
- New methods, challenges and opportunities of social media data
- Design methods and user experience in digital collaboration
Track Chairs
- Sara Hofmann, University of Agder, Norway (lead)
- Marius Rohde Johannessen, University of South-Eastern Norway
- Panos Panagiotopoulos, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Social innovation may be defined as the generation and implementation of new ideas about social relationships and social organization. Social innovation is a complex process that profoundly changes the basic routines, beliefs, or resource and authority flows of the social setting in which it occurs. It may take several forms from superficial gestures (that often address symptoms only of social problems) to revolutionary moves (that might even be destructive) – but the meaning of the academic/scientific term is mostly intended to cover evolutionary solutions that address complex societal problems and seeks humanitarian solutions and typically needs support, backing or even leadership from government(s). Social innovation often requires government transformation, empowerment of civic society and may also require participation from those affected. In the context of the eGov-CEDEM-ePart conference this track is primarily interested in methods, techniques, solutions or cases studies of social innovation projects that involved some governmental entity at any (local, municipal, county or country) level. In this sense we distinguish social innovation from business innovation, and while find social entrepreneurship and social enterprise – as interpreted in their global context – important, the track’s primary focus is civil and governmental participation in innovative social projects.
What makes such social projects innovative? The use of technology? A smart idea? A new way of looking at known societal issues? Original ways of contributing solutions to social challenges? Better use of scarce public or civil resources? Innovations addressing social issues or societal problems may shape up in different ways: things may develop on their own ‘natural’ way absorbing influences and reacting to challenges; community solutions may be self-organizing; or they may be citizen led (and intentional). In addition, governmental entities regularly provide support, platform, framework or policy (as a result of conscious government activity or intervention). One important topic of this track is innovative ways of using ICT with various social goals of either fixing known problems or making things better or attempting to avoid and pre-empty potential (expected) problems.
Topics invited cover – but not limited to:
- Theoretical reflections on the nature and dimensions of social innovation
- The role of technologies in social innovation
- Digital technologies to improve design of policies and services
- Instruments and incentives for stimulating social innovation
- Social innovation ecosystems and the role of stakeholders
- Case studies and analysis of social innovation practices
- Relationships with other types of innovation
- Methodological approaches to assess impacts of social innovation policies and programme
- Measuring and benchmarking social and pubic value generation
- Solutions addressing societal challenges related to healthcare and healthy aging
- Innovative services helping disadvantaged groups
- Co-design, co-production and co-provision of service
- Experimentation, development, and emergence of new products, services and structures in the social sphere
Track Chairs
- Csaba Csaki, Corvinus Business School, Hungary (lead)
- Gianluca Misuraca, European Commission´s Joint Research Centre, Seville
- Marijn Janssen, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Public sector organizations increasingly publish open data for everyone to freely reuse. At the same time, sensor data from a wide range of sources provide vast amounts of data. All this data have the potential to transform businesses, citizens and the public sector itself. They provide unprecedented opportunities for improving decision making, enhancing transparency, creating public value and boosting digital economy. But this is based on the assumption that a new generation of technology will be developed that will enable visualization, processing, storing and making sense out of big data. Therefore, this context brings forward numerous potential benefits, but also important social and technical challenges and barriers.
The “Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects” Track focuses on open government data, public big data sharing and use, data for improving public value and transparency as well as data analytics capitalizing on Linked Open Data and other technologies. The track also invites researchers interested in the underlying assumptions behind, and consequences of, opening up and using data, focusing on transparency, accountability, and other organizational and societal issues that are related to open data in the public sector.
Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:
- Open data policy, politics, governance and decision making: the role of open data in supporting eGovernment policies
- Governance of open, big and linked data; opportunities, drivers and barriers for/to the adoption of open, big and linked data
- The global spread of open data policy; transparency and accountability, economic innovation, drivers and barriers for open data; smart open, big and linked data applications and dashboards for decision making
- Open data and technologies: technical frameworks for data and metadata; ontologies, linked open data and knowledge graphs; mash-ups; data formats, standards and APIs; integration into backend systems; data visualisation; data quality
- The roles of data end-users and intermediaries
- Innovation and co-production with open and linked data: the role of open, big and linked data in public sector innovation; open data enabled models of public service provision; government as a platform; the role of public, private and societal stakeholders in data sharing and use; making open data innovation sustainable; connecting open data and crowdsourcing; data and information literacy
- Evidence and impacts: impact on society and/or public administration; value of real-life applications based on open government data, costs and benefits of providing or using open data; emerging good practices; and public value generation using open data.
Track Chairs
- Anneke Zuiderwijk, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands (lead)
- J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA
- Efthimios Tambouris, University of Macedonia, Greece
Governments’ and public administrations’ adaptation and implementation of emerging digital technologies can cause disruptive transformation throughout the entire society. The utilization of new technologies influence internal processes within public administration and its external interaction with citizens and businesses, including the roles these actors play. The emerging digital infrastructure and environment, in which these stakeholders interact, also puts society in front of new challenges due to associated rebound and unintended side effects. The Digital Society Track therefore focuses on the relationship between the involved stakeholders, and their strategies and incentives as they implement these digital technologies and contribute to the development of a digital society.
Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:
- Agent-based Modelling and Digital Agents: e.g., improved spatio-temporal understanding of social networks, stakeholder interaction, and the interrelation with public policies
- Algorithmic Society: e.g., informational filter bubble; participation by algorithmic decisions; coping strategies to overcome exclusion; negotiations between stakeholders through algorithms; effects on (e)governance
- Mydata/Data Sensitivity: e.g., increased control/transparency over personal data/information; dominant and subordinate positions towards the creation of compact digital spaces
- Digital Sustainability: e.g., digital technologies in public administrations towards sustainability; SDGs and digital transformation; participatory design practices/stakeholder interaction
- Digital Skills and Education in the Public Sector: e.g., curricula and training concepts for government 3.0; transdisciplinary co-creation models organization learning in public administration; bridging the (digital) gap between systems-world of professionals and life-world of citizens with semantic interoperability
- Digital Infrastructure: e.g., entanglement of societal and technical infrastructure (IoT); norm critical aspects of data/data pattern
- Once-Only Principle: e.g., drivers and barriers towards European implementation; use-cases for business and citizens; single digital gateway; digital single market
- Unintended side-effects: e.g., rebound effects of digital technologies in the public sphere; cultural and social disruption due to digital paradigm shifts
Track Chairs
- Thomas Lampoltshammer, Danube University Krems, Austria (lead)
- Christian Østergaard Madsen, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Katarina L. Gidlund, Mid Sweden University, Sweden
Our economy and the traditional infrastructure (transport, energy, water etc.) have become highly dependent on the reliable functioning of the ICT. As a result, the ICT has become a critical infrastructure which is vulnerable to all kinds or risks and threats. This infrastructure has no central authority, instead it is governed by pubic-private organizational networks and contains both emerging and purposefully designed parts. These parts can possess various degrees of vulnerability and might have different risks profiles. Governments play a role as regulators and facilitators of infrastructures operations and development, while simultaneously being users themselves. Lack of awareness about the vulnerabilities, as well as lack of coordination and mechanisms for prompt policy responses, can result in significant consequences for the life course of not just one, but multiple interconnected national systems. Therefore, the multi-layer governance approach involving national and supranational state actors is necessary to tackle the various aspects of the problem, such as anticipating and addressing the vulnerabilities, promoting awareness, and modifying the cooperation and response mechanism.
The track “Cybersecurity and critical infrastructure in government” focuses on the operation and policies for creating secure, safe and reliable critical infrastructures for areas like information exchange, public services and transport, energy, policies, and other public-private infrastructures. This track covers various aspects of cybersecurity and critical infrastructure. The topics can include (but are not limited to):
- National and European regulation of cybersecurity
- National and European regulation of critical infrastructures
- Legal development of cybersecurity
- Legal development of the regulation of critical infrastructures
- Comparison of the legal situation concerning cybersecurity / critical infrastructure within the EU / between the EU and other countries
- Reliability, privacy, compliance and security
- Complexity and dependencies of ICT infrastructures
- 4G, 5G infrastructures development and use
- Governance and regulation of cybersecurity and infrastructure
- Local, national and supranational governance
- Privacy-by-design, compliance-by-design, security-by-design
- Risks assessments
- Public policies and comparative research
- Design and development of critical infrastructures
Track chairs
- Natalia Kadenko (lead), Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
- Marijn Janssen, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Legal informatics allows for a plethora of useful and efficient solutions for the public sector. These applications offer support for a variety of fields, such as: the production and management of legislation, support for the judiciary, support for governance and citizens by enhancing participation, and support for education.
With all these applications a wide variety of questions arise. One encounters the spectrum of legal challenges that the implementation of new technologies and the usage of big data entail. In addition the domain of information science faces the challenge to bring logic and formalism into the multitude of legal systems as well as managing privacy challenges, data protection issues, digital identity issues, technology for natural language processing and annotation of legal texts, including argument retrieval, and visualization of legal information, data and argumentation.
With these challenges in mind, we invite papers on the legal, technical, societal, ethical, theoretical and practical questions that arise within the multidisciplinary field of legal informatics. Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:
- Legal implications of E-Government
- Digital administrative procedures, digital signatures, digital identities, storing of personal data etc.
- Digitized administrative procedures and the impact of citizens and businesses
- Legal implications of big data applications: challenges to privacy, autonomy, governance, equity, and fairness Legislative framework for legal informatics on a European and national level Better regulation
- Privacy: policies, regulations, strategies, recommendations Information systems to ensure privacy standards Copyright law in the legal informatics domain Open Data regulations on a European and national level in the context of legal informatics Applications and use cases: implementations of legal informatics systems under realistic conditions
- Theory and foundations: Contributions to the theory and interdisciplinary foundations for the use of information systems in the legal domain
- Technology: Contributions to the technological advancement of information systems in the legal domain.
Track Chairs
- Peter Parycek (lead), Fraunhofer Fokus, Germany
- Anna-Sophie Novak, Danube University Krems, Austria
Practitioners are encouraged to provide extended abstracts or sort papers that can be presented during the conference. Example of submissions include policy initiatives, policy recommendations, descriptions of EU project outputs, inspiring case studies, software tools, methods and best practices. Specifically, we welcome the following submissions:
- Policy strategies for public sector transformation
- Digital agendas and strategies
- Case stories of public sector transformation
- Policies for transforming public sector
- Examples of Public living labs at national and local level
- Experience of national digital teams
- Cases of citizens participation, participatory budgets and public consultations
- Cases of user centered digital services
- Applications of disruptive technologies for public administration, including for instance Big Data, blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, high performance computing
- Lessons learned, Critical Success Factors (CSF) and failure Factors
- Public sector software for service provisioning, interoperability, voting and other areas
- Demonstrations of products
Track Chairs
- Francesco Mureddu (lead), The Lisbon Council, Belgium (lead)
- Peter Reichstädter, Austrian Parliament, Austria
- Francesco Molinari, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
- Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, United Nations University, Portugal