The track serves as an umbrella for all e-Government-related topics except the special-topics tracks. E-Government research 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 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
  • Interdisciplinary approaches
  • Innovation management, transformational government
  • Stakeholder and change management
  • Strategies and policies for ICT-enabled public administration overhaul
  • 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
  • Digital Transformation and the Public Sector
  • Artificial Intelligence uses and the Public Sector
  • Distributed Ledger Technology/Blockchain and the Public Sector
  • The Internet of Things and the Public Sector
  • 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
  • Data protection and privacy-by-design
  • Social media use for G2B and G2C communications
  • Social media impact on public administration practices
  • 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, 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
  • Policies and decision-making in government

Track Chairs

  • Ida Lindgren (lead), Linköping University, Sweden
  • Hans Jochen Scholl, University of Washington, USA
  • Gabriela Viale Pereira, Danube University Krems, Austria

The General E-Democracy & eParticipation track aims to present recent developments in electronic participation and digital engagement covering all relevant technical, political and social aspects.

E-participation and e-democracy 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-Participation and e-Democracy to present and discuss new ideas, meet other researchers and practitioners and facilitate future collaborations. We welcome theoretical papers as well as case studies and quantitative papers, but also encourage authors to combine them for challenges, analyses and elaborations on further developments.

Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:

  • Foundations of e-Participation and e-Democracy research including theories, methods, models and approaches
  • The role of social and mobile media
  • Transparency and open access
  • Design and co-creation of participatory public services; bottom-up initiatives
  • Advances in online deliberation and discourse, participatory budgeting, eConsultation, ePolling, and eLegislation, eElectioneering, eCampaigning and eVoting
  • Advances in participatory policy making using policy modeling, simulation, impact assessment and visualization methods and tools
  • Digital research methods and big data applications
  • Public engagement around big and open data
  • The role of e-Participation and e-Democracy in national and global crisis situations
  • Comparative analyses of e-Participation and e-Democracy practices
  • Impact assessment and public value considerations in real world decision making
  • Digital literacy and its consequences for eParticipation and e-Democracy
  • e-Participation and e-Democracy projects: design, implementation, evaluation, quality and impact
  • Sustainability of e-Participation, e-Democracy and citizen engagement; good practices and key factors for success; motivational factors and the impact of participation
  • Participatory and communication platforms; ICT, mobile media and new forms of participation; applications for citizens
  • Digital interactions between citizens, businesses, governments, service providers and other stakeholders
  • 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
  • Living Labs and Social Innovation
  • Critical perspectives: wrongdoings, bad experiences, hype but not reality, fringe groups
  • Privacy, security and ethical considerations

Track Chairs

  • Panos Panagiotopoulos (lead), Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
  • Robert Krimmer, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
  • Peter Parycek, Fraunhofer Fokus, Germany / Danube-University Krems, Austria

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

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
  • Tomasz Janowski, Gdansk University of Technology, Poland / Danube University Krems, Austria

Digital and social media are central for government, public administration,  democratic and political processes and communication. One the one hand they are increasingly important interface between governments, the public sector and their respective publics, and 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 organizations, across governance networks, impacting political communication and campaigning. Whilst social media is extensively used in politics and by political figures, governments 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 analytics in political communication and public organizations
  • Organizational issues relevant to the implementation of social media in democratic contexts and the transformation of public administration
  • Stakeholders and digital publics of government engagement on social media
  • Enterprise/organizational networking and knowledge sharing applications
  • Internal and informal digital networks in public administration;
    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

  • Noella Edelmann (lead), Danube University Krems, Austria
  • Sarah Hoffmann (University Bremen)
  • Marius Rohde Johannessen (University of South-Eastern Norway)

Social innovation is about developing and implementing new ideas, services or any other need to fulfill social demands. Social innovations should contribute to the society ability to act and contribute to realizing societal values. Social Innovation has been recently gaining traction in policy and academic debates, benefiting from an increasingly favorable environment for development and experimentation, especially in combination with technological and organizational innovation, and as a possible contribution to address dire societal challenges. In particular, since its revival in the European policy agenda with the Innovation Union Flagship Initiative in 2010, the number of publications and policy reports has been growing. Their main aim was to define the concept of social innovation and work out the relationship between social innovation and other types of innovations in order to contribute defining research directions and identify policy implications.
Yet, social innovation is not well defined and is not part of a single discipline or epistemic community. The relationship between social innovation and other types of innovation is subject to research. Social innovation needs government transformation, empowerment of civic society and requires participation Within this evolving context, at the intersection between research, practice, and policy, areas of focus and interest of this track include but are not limited to the following topics:

  • Theoretical reflections on the nature and dimensions of social innovation
  • Relationships with other types of innovation
  • Private and public sector innovation and transformation
  • Practices to implement social innovation
  • Methodological approaches to assess impacts of social innovation policies and programme
  • Measuring and benchmarking social and pubic value generation
  • The role of technologies in social innovation
  • Digital technologies to improve design of policies and services
  • Instruments for stimulating social innovation
  • Social innovation ecosystems
  • Societal challenges such as healthcare and active and healthy aging, and services targeted at disadvantaged groups, including innovation in designing and implementing new social services to face new or unmet needs
  • Technological and organizational solutions
  • Co-design, co-production and co-provision of service
  • Case studies and analysis of social innovation practices
  • Social Innovation as catalyst to facilitate experimentation, development, and emergence of new products, services and structures

Track Chairs

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 be enable visualization, processing, storing and making sense out of big data. Therefore, this context brings forward numerous social and technical challenges and questions.

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 sharing data, focusing on issues such as transparency, accountability, and other organizational and societal issues that are related to this topic.

Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:

  • 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; data end-users and intermediaries
  • Open data policy, politics, governance and decision making: the role of open data in supporting eGovernment policies (e.g. the only-only principle, interoperability frameworks); 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 apps and dashboards for decision making
  • 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; public value generation and open data

Track Chairs

  • Efthimios Tambouris (lead), University of Macedonia, Greece
  • Anneke Zuiderwijk, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
  • Ramon Gil-Garcia, University at Albany, USA

Digitalization drives, through rapid changes via digital technologies, disruptive transformation throughout the entire society, including governments and public administration. The Digital Society Track therefore focuses on the relationship between all involved stakeholders, as well as their strategies and their data driven-movements for adapting to these changes and technologies along the arising paradigm shift of a truly digital society.

Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:

  • Agent-based Modelling: 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 and Digital Agents: e.g., increased control/transparency over personal data/information; automated interaction towards public administration regarding the use of e-governmental services
  • Digital Health: e.g., inclusion and inequality through digital governmental eHealth services; ambient assisted living (AAL) and the role of municipalities
  • Digital Sustainability: e.g., digital technologies in public administrations towards sustainability; SDGs and digital transformation; digital and sustainable PPP concepts
  • 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 Transformation Journey: e.g., frameworks for tackling disruption-driven innovation processes within public administration and governments
  • Liquid Democracy: e.g., new ways of delegating trust; transnational political engagement; expertise-driven e-voting
  • Once-Only Principle: e.g., drivers and barriers towards European implementation; use-cases for business and citizens; single digital gateway; digital single market

Track Chairs

  • Thomas Lampoltshammer (lead), Danube University Krems, Austria
  • David Osimo, The Lisbon Council, Spain
  • Martijn Hartog, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Practitioners are encouraged to provide long abstracts of forthcoming papers, summaries of workshop proceedings, descriptions of project outputs, work experiences, inspiring case studies, and best practice examples.

Track Chairs

  • Peter Reichstädter (lead), Austrian Parliament, Austria
  • Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen, United Nations University, Portugal
  • Francesco Mureddu, The Lisbon Council, Belgium
  • Francesco Molinari, Politecnico di Milano, Italy