TRACK 8: Developing active citizenship to boost citizen engagement through digital government
Track Chairs: Edimara M. Luciano (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), Gabriela V. Pereira (Danube University Krems, Austria), Carmine Bianchi (Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy)
Citizen engagement has been mentioned as a barrier in several research focused on collecting more benefits from digital government strategies. Making public institutions open and transparent, and generating public value is a massive challenge that cannot prescind citizens’ participation in the process of thinking, discussing, modeling, approving, implementing, and evaluating public services and solutions. Consultation and participation processes have been bringing governments and society closer. However, there are new challenges to face, significantly in times when the trust of society in governments is compromised in many parts of the world and misinformation and disinformation issues are arising. Consequently, it is paramount to advance on understanding of engagement as an institutional, structural, social, cultural, and political phenomenon, as well as the individual cognitive process to decide to get involved at all levels, from town to nationwide public management discussion.
This track focuses on discussing citizen engagement through active participation of citizens in the public discussion aiming at improving digital public services and digital government impact. We invite contributions from various backgrounds and disciplines. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: Strengthening governance capacities for active citizenship; Frameworks, strategies, and nudges fostering citizen engagement; Digital government initiatives accomplishing engagement; Collaborative governance and collective decision-making processes; Soft policies for increasing participation and binding decisions; Antecedents and consequents of engagement and disengagement behavior; The role of leadership from government officials and citizens representatives; Active citizenship opposing patronizing approaches; Sense of belonging and social and political capital as drivers to active citizenship; Active citizenship contributions to social cohesion; and Engagement programs assessment.
