CFP

ICEGOV2018: 11th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance

National University of Ireland Galway

Galway, Ireland, April 4-6, 2018

Conference website	http://www.icegov.org
Submission link	https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icegov2018
Submission deadline	September 19, 2017
Paper acceptance / rejection notification	November 20, 2017
Application for Scholarship closes	November 27, 2017
Scholarship decision notification	November 30, 2017
Camera-ready paper submission deadline	December 31, 2017
Registration deadline for authors	January 31, 2018
Doctoral Colloquium	April 3, 2018

Topics: digital government digital citizenship smart cities sustainable societies

1. Introduction

The prevailing model of industrialized societies is quickly becoming unsustainable, economically, socially, and ecologically, as well as in terms of individual well-being. Thus, sustainability has become a key objective on the global policy agenda. While sustainability is often equated with environmental impacts, in truth the concept involves maintaining, over time, all three dimensions of environ2mental integrity, economy equity, and social well-being. The preservation of the natural environment serves as a prerequisite for a well-functioning economy and social justice. Thus, it is necessary to develop the three dimensions of sustainability in tandem, for which social actors, including governments and private enterprises, must find a balance. This understanding is the major driver for the design of a new generation of integrated policies and programs by governments around the world to implement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) or Agenda 2030 adopted in 2015.

Related to this notion, there is a realization that for cities, states, countries, and society at large to survive and sustain, the capability of resilience, or the ability to persist under unforeseeable disruptions, is also vital. With increasing natural (e.g., storms, earthquakes) and man-made (e.g., cyberattacks) disturbances, governments need to develop capabilities to resist, absorb, accommodate, and recover from such shocks, and assist affected individuals and organizations. Here, digital technology has been identified as a way for governments to develop sustainability and resilience through three waves, comprising electronic government, mobile government, and transformational government. Whether it is in the form of GIS, energy management, or cybersecurity systems, to name a few, facilitating development and improving access to digital technologies could serve as means for promoting both sustainability and resilience.

Indeed, emerging digital technologies, such as big data and analytics, cloud technologies, Internet of Things, Machine and Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems, Robotics, Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers are increasingly being leveraged by governments to fundamentally transform how a new generation of integrated public policies and digital public services are designed and developed. Apart from seeking to harness these technologies to address societal challenges associated with the SDG 2030 and regional integration initiatives such as the European Union Single Market, governments are experimenting with ways to exploit these new technologies to transform their internal workings in order to reduce administrative burden on citizens and businesses and simplify regulatory systems, while making governance processes more inclusive and transparent.

However, the challenges facing researchers, policy makers, and practitioners today have to do with how to ensure that the digital transformation initiatives really deliver verifiable transformational results and ultimately positive, sustained development outcomes in societies. Policy makers and decision makers in government also have to understand and grapple with a whole host of issues and challenges related to transformational governance, which this Call for Papers highlights. ICEGOV2018 will explore how existing and newly emerging digital technologies can be effectively harnessed to create sustainable and resilient societies, as well as the implications and cost associated with the use of these technologies.

The ICEGOV series brings together academia, governments, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector to share their insights and experiences in theory and practice of Digital Government. ICEGOV promotes interactions among stakeholders including policymakers, government officials, elected representatives, researchers, innovators, and educators from developing and developed countries; all sharing a common concern that public investment in Digital Government should advance public policy and development. ICEGOV is a platform where such stakeholders can discuss ways of working together across national, sectoral, development and other borders towards addressing this concern.

Following ten previous conferences in Macau (ICEGOV2007), Cairo (ICEGOV2008), Bogotá (ICEGOV2009), Beijing (ICEGOV2010), Tallinn (ICEGOV2011), Albany (ICEGOV2012), Seoul (ICEGOV2013), Guimarães (ICEGOV2014), Montevideo (ICEGOV2016), and New Delhi (ICEGOV2017), the ICEGOV series has become a source of significant research and policy insight, able to reach national and global policy and research audiences. In figures, the ICEGOV community includes 1548 authors and reviewers from 102 countries – 69% from academia, 18% from government, 9% from industry and 4% from international and other organizations. Also, on average, every ICEGOV conference attracts 180 submissions from 49 countries and is attended by over 400 participants from 50 countries including government (40%), academia (36%), industry and civil society (14%), and international organizations (10%).

2. Paper Submissions

ICEGOV2018 invites submissions of original papers, not published or considered for publication elsewhere, that contribute to the conference theme: "Transforming Digital Governance for Sustainable and Resilient Societies". Papers can be submitted to one of 10 Tracks, the Doctoral Colloquium, or the Poster Exhibition, as described in more detail below.

Track 1: Digitization and Transformation

Government digitization refers to the development, operation, and maintenance of the background technological environment, including the availability of technological capabilities, services, and infrastructure within and between government organizations. It focuses on the use of digital technologies to improve the access to governmental information previously held in physical formats; to modernize and give digital access to public services provided to citizens, business, and other stakeholders; and to automate internal operations of government organizations. Government digital transformation aims at improving internal processes, structures, and working practices of government organizations through digital technology. It goes beyond the simple automation and modernization of government organizations by encompassing administrative and institutional reforms in government for greater internal efficiency and effectiveness. Collaboration between government organizations, even whole-of-government arrangements comprising entire sectors and levels of government, are pursued as part of government digital transformation programs. Realizing this reform and transformation demands a fundamental rethinking of how government organizations operate and of how the current digital and technological environment can be used innovatively to lead to the desired levels of transformation and modernization of government organizations and public services delivery. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Administrative process automation
Business process re-engineering and integration
Connected and networked government
Datification Processes
Digital government competencies and frameworks
Digital public service design and delivery
Electronic public record management
Emerging modes of digital communication
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Government change management
Government cloud computing
Government enterprise architectures
Government information networks
Government information portals
Government information sharing
Government interoperability frameworks
Government knowledge management
Government performance management
Government stakeholder management
Pro-active service delivery
Public-private partnerships
Shared government services
Whole of government structures and processes

Track 2: Digital Participation, Engagement, and Empowerment

Digital technologies are considered as necessary instruments to improve the level of participation and engagement of citizens in societal activities. They offer governments the possibility to streamline and transform their communication processes and relationships with citizens, businesses, and other non-government actors through multiple digital channels. Participation, engagement, and empowerment of citizens are part of a larger trend towards implementing the Digital by Default and Open Government principles. The latter is aimed at increasing the transparency and accountability of government operations and the operations of public service providers, and in turn building trust between citizens and institutions, and between the governed and the governing. This is expected to bring citizens closer to government and political institutions. It gives the opportunity to citizens to act as “advisers”, “partners”, and “auditors” of governments, leading to a higher level of shared responsibility between governments and citizens to tackle societal challenges that hamper the development of sustainable and resilient states and societies. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Citizen consultation, ideation and scorecards
Co-design and co-production of digital services
Crowdsourcing and co-delivery
Data-driven citizen journalism
Digital collaborative accountability
Digital empowerment
Digital reasoning frameworks for social platforms
Electronic rulemaking
Emerging modes of digital communication with citizens
Expose and investigate services
Online deliberation and discourse
Participatory budgeting
Public bidding on government contracts
Public-private-people partnerships
Social enterprise for public service
Technology-facilitated anti-corruption

Track 3: Contextualization

Digital government like any phenomenon is most effectively analyzed and understood in context. Contextualization of digital government refers to the need to promote specific efforts by countries, regions, cities, communities and other territorial and social units to develop themselves, e.g. to pursue specific public policy and sustainable development objectives. In fact, each specific context (country, region, community, etc.) has its own particularities and interests, has its own set of restraining and driving conditions to promote digital government development. Thus, this demands the adoption of contingency approaches that take into consideration the specificities, including their objectives, design, operations and outcomes, of different local, sectoral and local-sectoral contexts. The combination of context-specificity and development objectives is crucial to achieve successful digital governance. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Digital Government and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Digital Government and cross-sectoral policy requirements
Digital Government and local and sectoral impact evaluation
Digital Government and policy coherence for development
Digital Government context adaptation
Digital Government context-to-context transfer
Digital Government design for context versus design for reuse
Digital Government for aligning national strategies with local needs
Enabling versus disabling Digital Government contextual features
Local versus national Digital Government
Multi-level Digital Government
Regulatory technology for compliance monitoring
Sectoral Digital Government: Health, Transportation, Education, Social, Waste
Sectoral versus multi-sectoral Digital Government

Track 4: Cybersecurity, Privacy and Ethics

The recent surge in the cyberattacks on critical government technology infrastructures and services in different parts of the world has made cybersecurity an important policy issue for many governments. At the same time, governments are grappling with how to provide the necessary legal and regulatory framework and instruments to protect citizen rights from threats posed by pervasive use of digital technologies in society such as public cameras, traffic sensors, social media platforms, and wearable devices. The ethical principles and foundation for addressing these problems are far from adequately developed. This track calls for research and practice contributions that provide a better understanding of the nature of cybersecurity challenges faced by governments and how governments can respond to them. Contributions that examine how to address the privacy issues arising from digital transformation initiatives or the use of digital technologies are also welcome. Additionally, relevant to the track are works that provide ethical foundations for addressing these challenges and others in the government technology ecosystem. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Cybersecurity policies
Cybersecurity readiness of government institutions
Engaging public in developing privacy laws for digital technologies
Ethical consideration of government access to citizen data for the public good
Magna Carta or Bill of rights for data
Personal data anonymization solutions and policies
Protecting privacy of communication
Protecting privacy of data and image
Protecting privacy of location and space
Protecting public transportation networks
Protecting smart public infrastructure, e.g., nuclear power plants
Securing government information infrastructure, e.g., with Distributed Ledgers

Track 5: Open Government

Government organizations have over the years prevented access to large amounts of data resulting from governance activities. Access to these data was restricted to limited groups within government or to others that were granted access for a fee. The data openness paradigm enabled by technological developments and the Open Government Data movement argue that if properly “opened” and reused, government data provides great opportunities to promote massive social, political, and economic transformation in governments and societies. Consequently, governments around the world have taken up the challenge of opening and making transparent the data pertaining to their functioning and those of the public sector at large. Nevertheless, achieving the expected transformation of governments and societies from open government data initiatives still poses many challenges to researchers and policy makers. Issues related to power relationships among government agencies, data governance, security of open data infrastructure, and interest of citizens in open data, are yet to be fully understood by policy analysts and researchers in specific government contexts. In addition, operationalizing and implementing openness and transparency initiatives while considering issues such as security and privacy remain problematic. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Accuracy, accountability and relevance of open data
Censoring and restriction of open data
Co-creating open data for societal benefits
Copyright, intellectual property issues of open data
Cross-border data flows
Data quality assessment
Freedom of information policies
Innovation with open data
Institutional mechanisms for open data and open source
Licensing of open data
Measurement and evaluation of open government efforts
Metadata standards for open data
Multi-lingual data and localization of open data
Open data storytelling
Open data technology infrastructure
Open source use in data governance and sharing
Policy interventions for open data and open source
Pricing and access to open content
Sharing and cooperation policies between departments
Sharing of e-governance research data
Technologies and standards for data storing and transformation

Track 6: Digital Citizenship

Digital citizenship refers to the participation in the effective use of the internet and other digital technologies. Digital citizens access, use, and achieve their personal and collective social, political, and economic goals with the internet and other digital technologies. The concept goes far beyond addressing issues like digital divide to ensuring that members of society are ultimately empowered through the appropriate exploitation of the technologies relevant to their individual situations. From a practical standpoint, digital citizenship initiatives help technology leaders, educators, and parents to understand what technology users, students, and children should know in order to use technology appropriately. In an increasingly digital world, discussions about digital citizenship are gaining momentum and policy attention around the world, with a focus on digital skill requirements for the next generation, digital services for younger and older populations, as well as how to safely interact in the digital world. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Adoption of digital currencies
Asymmetry created by digital access and use
Digital and information literacy
Digital commerce
Digital divide and access
Digital etiquette
Digital financial inclusion
Digital health and wellness
Digital rights and responsibilities
Digital rights management
Interpretations of access and sharing
Lifelong universally verifiable digital identity
Online presence
Social media access and use

Track 7: Digital Culture and Inclusion

Digital technologies and initiatives can benefit traditional cultural institutions in several ways including, enhancing of visitor experiences by providing on-demand information on cultural artifacts of interest, enabling virtual interactivity with cultural artifacts, providing greater access to larger audiences including children and the disabled, and enabling new revenue streams through digital cultural contents. More fundamentally, the rapidly evolving digital culture is characterized by greater inclusion and participation of the public in the creation of different kinds of media, ranging from music, videos (YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud etc.), and art to their news on social media platforms for individual and collective purposes. The developing digital culture presents both challenges and opportunities for digital governance. For instance, governments can also leverage these new media to better understand the dynamics of society and respond to it. On the other hand, governments must ensure that all segments of society have access to these new media for a more representative digital culture. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Co-creating digital cultural artefacts
Cross-lingual and cultural digital services
Digital culture and education
Digital culture inclusion strategies
Digital culture strategies
Digital services for persons with disabilities
Digital technologies for cultural institutions
Robotics in public galleries, libraries, archives and museums
Universal and ubiquitous access to digital culture
Use of new media in public governance
Virtual reality applications for museums
Virtual reality applications for public engagement

Track 8: Governance of Smart Cities and Regions

Smart cities are characterized by urban innovations involving the use of integrated ICT solutions to manage city assets across domains, including transportation systems, water supply infrastructures, health systems, power plants, and waste management. Smart city initiatives involve investments in human and social capital, built environment and natural environment, for sustainable city growth. This also includes initiatives which foster collaborative governance of city assets and participation of businesses, civil society organizations, and citizens in addressing city challenges. In addition to smart city initiatives, smart region frameworks and smart solution deployments at village and rural levels are emerging to mitigate rural-urban migration. The rapid proliferation of smart initiatives creates the need for more robust governance frameworks for both horizontal coordination across policy sectors and vertical coordination across governance levels. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Aligning smart cities and smart region policies
Coordination of smart cities initiatives
Integrating energy and environment policies
Integrating green and economic policies
Integrating health and environment policies
Participatory governance of smart cities
Smart cities and sustainable development
Smart city policies
Smart environment policies
Smart industries
Smart infrastructure
Smart law enforcement
Smart mobility
Smart regions
Smart water management

Track 9: Bridging Digital Government Research and Policy

Governments in different parts of the world have over the years deployed numerous e-government infrastructures and services. This progress in e-government initiatives and policies is reflected in the global e government survey report series. Alongside, research on digital and e-governance has matured over the years, evidenced by the quantitative and qualitative increase in published e-government articles. What has remained a challenge is how to better connect the policy and research communities through targeted research efforts for helping governments and their suppliers address challenging new requirements. The Bridging Digital Government Research and Policy track examines the emerging visions for e-government in research and practice, the technologies required to implement them, and approaches that can be taken to accelerate innovation and the transition of demonstrations to fully operational e-government solutions. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Conceptual and practical boundaries of the Digital Government field
Cybersecurity assessment of critical information infrastructure
Design approaches for Digital Government solutions
Digital Government and Sustainable Development Goals
Digital Government education, knowledge and competencies
Digital Government in developing countries
Digital Government innovation systems and management
Digital Government measurement systems and approaches
Digital Government research agenda and roadmaps
Digital Government research foundations
Policies and strategies for Digital Government
Policies and strategies for e-Participation
Public policy issues and Digital Government

Track 10: The Dark Side of Digital Technologies

While digital technologies such as social media, big data, blockchains, and the Internet of Things have massive disruptive potential and impacts on social and economic aspects of society, the adoption of these technologies by organizations and individuals has also revealed the unintended consequences or dark side of these technologies. For example, the ability to work productively on mobile devices anywhere, anytime, results in “technostress”, a state in which employees are subject to relentless work-related pressure even in environments away from their office. On the other hand, the availability and ease of access of social media apps anywhere including at work has led to a significant loss of productivity in both government and private organizations. Other “dark” issues include privacy loss from the possibility of re identification from big or open data integration and triangulation. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Adapting to constantly changing technology
Computer induced health problems
Conceptualizing IT use-induced stress, technostress
Cyber criminals
Digital distraction
Digital stalking and cyber-bullying
Digital traceability and privacy loss
Employee misuse of IT: data theft
Insulating digitally-reliant knowledge societies from digital blackouts
Measurement of stress from constant connectivity and impulse response
Panic inducement through social media
Panoptic effects: omnipresence of power through digital connectivity
Policies for employee wellness
Policies for managing technostress in government organizations
Proliferation of fake news on social media
Reputation loss and cyber defamation
Solutions for detecting and reporting cyber-bullying
Trust dimensions with respect to IT use in knowledge societies

Doctoral Colloquium

Submissions to the Doctoral Colloquium are welcome from doctoral students who would like to present their research work on any topic related to the conference theme. Each submission should explain the research problem addressed and why the problem is important, the research questions pursued and the research methodology adopted to pursue them, what kind of scientific and technical challenges were encountered during the research, and respective research results. Presentation of students’ work at the Doctoral Colloquium aims at providing feedback from academic experts and building the students’ peer-to-peer and professional networks. Although supervisors can co-author the paper, the doctoral student must be the main author.

Poster Exhibition

The conference also welcomes submissions of poster papers to describe ongoing work, including new ideas, initial results, open questions, development plans, etc. with potential to contribute to Digital Government research and practice. Accepted posters will be presented during the Poster Exhibition to stimulate discussion, create research-practice and research-policy connections, provide feedback to the authors, and nourish opportunities for international, multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration.

3. Submission Categories

The submission categories comprise research papers (complete or ongoing), experience papers, doctoral research papers, and poster papers. All papers must comply with the page limit set below, including references, and must be submitted to the appropriate Track.

Research papers (complete or ongoing): papers that document complete or ongoing research in one or more aspects of Digital Government, with proven or potential capability to advance the state of research in the field.
Experience papers: papers that describe completed or ongoing innovations in Digital Government policy or practice with proven or potential capability to advance the state of practice in the field, including critical success factors, challenges encountered and how they were addressed.
Doctoral research papers: papers written by doctoral students to describe their ongoing research related to the topic of the conference.
Poster papers: papers that present new ideas and initiatives with potential to contribute to Digital Government research and practice. Authors of accepted poster papers are subsequently required to create an actual poster (A1 size), which will be printed and displayed at the conference venue. Instructions and guidelines for the creation of the poster will be sent separately and only to the authors of accepted poster papers.

4. Submission Process

The submission process includes the steps listed below. Note that failure in correctly following all the steps within the deadlines may result in your paper not being accepted for the conference. For specific instructions and guidelines on how to prepare and upload your paper, please consult this document: https://storage.egov.uminho.pt/index.php/s/gefYkz3ljE5M8Ug

The paper must be written in correct English, use the ICEGOV2018 ACM Word Template (https://storage.egov.uminho.pt/index.php/s/MY9smObYeKjwqqn), and be submitted through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icegov2018) in PDF format by 5 September 2017 (paper submission deadline). No other means of submission are accepted.
All papers submitted within the deadline will undergo an initial screening process by the ICEGOV Secretariat. The screening process will focus on issues such as plagiarism, incomplete papers, papers that do not follow the template, and papers out of the conference scope. Any paper under one or more of these circumstances may be desk-rejected.
Following the screening process, a double-blind peer review process by the Programme Committee members will take place. The authors will be notified about acceptance or rejection decisions, together with review comments, by 20 November 2017. They will also be informed of the Track for which their paper was accepted.
Accepted papers must be revised to address the review comments obtained in the previous step, perform any other corrections, as needed, and add complete author names and affiliations. The final version of the paper must then be re-submitted through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icegov2018), as an update to the existing submission and as a Word file (.docx), by 15 December 2017 (final submission deadline).
Once the paper is submitted as final, an editorial review by the ICEGOV Secretariat will take place to ensure that the paper follows the ACM template and is within the page limit. Papers that do not fulfil the publication requirements will be sent back to the authors for immediate correction.
Finally, ACM will send to the main author of all accepted papers an e-Rights form and complete instructions on how to fill. After completing the form online, the main author will be emailed a copy of the form, the copyright text, and the paper DOI. This information will be added to the final version of the paper by the ICEGOV Secretariat, which will also ensure the pagination of the paper, and the creation of the PDF file to be sent to the publisher.

5. Publications and Awards

For the 11th edition of ICEGOV, two publications are expected. The main publication is the conference proceedings, which includes all accepted papers presented during the conference tracks, as well as all Doctoral Colloquium and Poster Exhibition papers. As in previous years, the proceedings will be published by ACM Press, in digital format only, as part of the International Conference Proceedings Series and under the title Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ISBN 978-1-4503-5421-9).

A special issue of Government Information Quarterly is expected to be published by Elsevier with the best papers from conference. These papers will be carefully selected by the Programme Committee, and expanded and improved by the authors before publication.

A total of three awards categories are planned for the conference: Best Research Paper, Best Experience Paper, and Best Poster. All three categories will be chosen by the Awards Committee. More information on the awards will be provided closer to the conference.

6. Scholarships

Authors of accepted papers will be able to apply for a Scholarship to cover the registration fee of the conference and accommodation in Galway; no travel costs will be covered. The preference will be given to authors whose main affiliation is from a developing country. If a paper is co-authored, only one author may apply for the Scholarship. The application period will run from 20 to 27 November 2017 and more information will be available here: http://www.icegov.org/submit/scholarships/.

7. Programme

Besides presentations of submitted papers, which will take place during the Track Sessions, the conference programme will also include Keynote Lectures, Plenary Discussions, Invited Sessions, a Poster Exhibition, a Doctoral Colloquium, and social events for networking and community building. The full programme will be continuously updated here: www.icegov.org/programme.

The ICEGOV2018 Programme Committee Chairs,

Adegboyega Ojo, National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG)
Atreyi Kankanhalli, National University of Singapore (NUS)
Delfina Soares, United Nations University (UNU-EGOV)