Emerging Topics in Digital Government

Description

The Digital Government Emerging Topics Mini-Track provides a home for incubating new topics and emergent technologies in Digital Government research. Digital Government as an academic field is evolving towards the Next Generation Digital Government; new directions of research and practice are emerging while others are becoming accepted as foundational. These developments take place at the crossroads of different academic disciplines and in close connection to the practices in governments around the globe. However, the foundations of the field could still be identified more explicitly and rigorously. This mini-track invites papers positioned in relation to the foundations of Digital Government contributing to the evolution of the field, to clarifications and conceptualisations, or to addressing novel issues, innovative trends, and emergening technologies.

Submissions must speak specifically to the emerging nature of a technology or a specific topic and how the research presented builds new understanding by relating the research to the central developments in the field of Digital Government. Topics and research areas include but are not limited to:

• Emergent technologies and Digital Government
• The conceptual and practice-based boundaries and foundations of the field of Digital Government
• Agendas for Digital Government research and research roadmaps
• Design science in Digital Government
• Cross-border Digital Government / Interoperable Digital Government
• Data sharing within the Public Sector, and beyond, including Private Sector and Civil Society
• Ethics of Digital Government from theoretical and practical views
• Digital Government education and competences
• ICT-enabled policy making and Digital Government policy
• Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) in Digital Government: applications, legislation, benefits and risks
• Internet of Things (IoT) in the public sector: applications, regulation, social impact, security and data analytics
• Ethical considerations, privacy concerns, and the right to know
• Participatory approaches in government, for instance co-production
• Challenged democracies and information technologies
• Impact of social media platforms, “Fake news” and “alternate facts” in democracies
• Online power dynamics and electoral systems in democracies
• Potential threats from technology-enabled government and ways to be protected
• Legal implications towards Next Generation Digital Government
• Comparative studies in the field of Digital Government
• Governing Digital Government initiatives
• Other topics as appropriate to the purposes of the mini-track

The papers submitted to this minitrack must be new and unpublished. We welcome papers from different settings and sectors in digital government and look more for innovative and creative analyses than best practices. We will also consider strong conceptual and empirical analysis (both qualitative and quantitative) rather than descriptive cases or opinion pieces.

Minitrack Leaders

Robert Krimmer, PhD, holds the ERA-Chair in e-Governance within Center for IT Impact Studies at Johan Skytte Institute for Political Studies at University of Tartu, Estonia. Robert’s research is focused on the transformation of the public sector, electronic participation and democracy, as well as e-voting, and all issues further developing a digital society. Between 2017 and 2021 Robert coordinated TOOP, the EU H2020 large-scale pilot on exploring and demonstrating the feasibility of the once-only principle involving 50+ partners from 21 countries inside and outside the European Union.

J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy and the Director of the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY).  Dr. Gil-Garcia is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and of the Mexican National System of Researchers.  In 2009, he was considered the most prolific author in the field of digital government research worldwide and in 2013 he was selected for the Research Award, which is “the highest distinction given annually by the Mexican Academy of Sciences to outstanding young researchers.”  More recently, Dr. Gil-Garcia was named “One of the World’s 100 Most Influential People in Digital Government” in 2018 and 2019 by Apolitical, which is a nonprofit organization based in London, United Kingdom. Currently, he is also a professor of the Business School at Universidad de las Américas Puebla in Mexico.  Dr. Gil-Garcia is the author or co-author of articles in prestigious international journals in Public Administration, Information Systems, and Digital Government and some of his publications are among the most cited in the field of digital government research worldwide.  His research interests include collaborative electronic government, inter-organizational information integration, smart cities and smart governments, adoption and implementation of emergent technologies, information technologies and organizations, digital divide policies, new public management, and multi-method research approaches.

Andriana Prentza, PhD, is Full Professor of Software Engineering at the Department of Digital Systems of the University of Piraeus, Greece. Andriana is very actively involved in a number of European and National R&D programs focusing on Information Communication Technologies (ICT) projects and she serves as expert evaluator and reviewer for the European Commission and national R&D programmes. Andriana’s current research interests include Software Engineering techniques and methodologies for the development and evaluation of interoperable software systems and services in heterogenous environments across different countries, domains, and actors, based on open standards in the areas of eGovernment and eHealth. She is a Senior Member of IEEE and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece. Between 2010 and 2021, she participated in Large Scale Pilot projects (LSPs) in the area of eProcurement and eGovernment (PEPPOL, e-SENS, TOOP) focusing on interoperable building blocks for public services. In the e-SENS and TOOP LSPs, Andriana was involved in the establishment, coordination, monitoring and evaluation of pilots across different countries between organizations, mostly from the public sector, using solutions based on open standards, such as the CEF Building Blocks. Andriana also led the Reference Architecture group in the TOOP LSP focusing in the feasibility of the once-only principle. Since 2017, Andriana is a member of the Change Management Board (CMB) of OpenPEPPOL in the pre-award procurement community which is responsible for introducing new specifications and maintaining the existing ones. In December 2020, Andriana was appointed in the Board of Directors of OASIS Open Europe Foundation.