dg.o2019: 20th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government Dubai, UAE, June 18-20, 2019

Governance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government (MBRSG)

Dubai, UAE, June 18-20, 2019
Website: http://dgsoc.org/dgo-2019/
Email: dgo2019@mbrsg.ac.ae
Hashtag: #dgo2019

The Digital Government Society (DGS) will hold the 20th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2019), with the theme "Governance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence".  dg.o 2019 will be hosted by the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government (formerly the Dubai School of Government), Dubai, United Arab Emirates on 18-20 June, 2019.  The dg.o conferences are an established forum for presentation, discussion, and demonstration of interdisciplinary research on digital government, political participation, civic engagement, technology innovation, applications, and practice. Each year the conference brings together scholars recognized for the interdisciplinary and innovative nature of their work, their contributions to theory (rigor) and practice (relevance), their focus on important and timely topics and the quality of their writing.

THEME & TOPICS: The 20th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research will feature the main theme of "Governance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence". The growing applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are triggering numerous opportunities—as well as challenges and dilemmas—for governments worldwide. Traditional forms of service provisioning, policy-making and enforcement are changing due to the inclusion AI algorithms, mechanisms and techniques. The growing digitization of government operations, the universal datafication of societal activities, behaviors and sentiments, as well as the maturity and feasibility of big data techniques and applications have collectively laid down solid foundations for industrial-scale operationalization of AI across most governments and societal sectors. This timely theme, builds on the dg.o 2018 conference which focused on governance in the data age. The rapid growth of the data-driven economy and the use of intelligent mechanisms result in rapid digitalization of government operations and the emergence of new governance structures. This datafication and AI revolution is boosted by growing smart cities applications, Internet of Things (IoT), social media, mobile apps, among other sources of big data.

Governments still face limited understanding of the multifaceted changes brought about by the advent of AI in governance. An increasing number of governments, international organizations, leading research centers, think tanks and global private sector corporations are coming together to explore these changes. However, there is a dearth of thought-leadership in the areas of policy, development and societal implications of AI. This knowledge gap is a key developmental barrier as many governments wrangle with the societal, economic, political and ethical implications of these transformations.

During the past two decades, the dg.o conference has been at the helm of the digital governance transformations. In its 20th anniversary, the dg.o 2019 conference will build in past themes to explore the fast maturing AI drive embraced by an increasing number of governments and businesses worldwide.

Finally, the dg.o 2019 will be held at the MBR School of Government in Dubai, UAE. The UAE government has officially acknowledged the importance of AI in government operations, economic and societal development. For example, on the strategic level, the UAE government has issued the national “UAE Artificial Intelligence Strategy”. On the organizational level, it has also appointed a “Minister of State of Artificial Intelligence”, a global first, who is tasked with coordinating the government’s AI efforts and driving the government’s AI agenda. On the global level, the UAE is also proactively contributing to the global agenda addressing the multi-faceted implications of these transformations. For example, the government has recently introduced its “Fourth Industrial Revolution” agenda and took the lead on putting together a council to address the manifestations of the fourth industrial revolution and its impact on society and economy, it is leading a global Blockchain council, while convening a global AI expert group of practitioners and thought-leaders. These developments align well with the conference theme, and will increase the impact of the knowledge created by submissions in the conference.

Important Dates

• January 29, 2019 (January 15, 2019): Papers are due
• February 3, 2019 (January 20, 2019): Workshops, tutorials, and panel proposals due
• April 15, 2019 (March 1, 2019): Application deadline for doctoral colloquium 
• March 15, 2019 (March 1, 2019): Notifications of acceptance
• March 29, 2019 (March 15, 2019): Posters and demo proposals due 
• May 15, 2019 (April 1, 2019): Doctoral colloquium notification
• April 19, 2019 (April 5, 2019): Poster/demo author notifications 
• April 24, 2019 (April 10, 2019): Camera-ready manuscripts due 
• May 24, 2019 (May 10, 2019): Early registration closes

Tracks

• TRACK 1. Data Analytics for Public Policy and Services
  Track Chairs: Akemi Takeoka Chatfield (akemi(at)uow.edu.au), Christopher G. Reddick, Gabriel Puron-Cid

  Open and big data analytics in government aims at discovering patterns, insights and trends that could provide the government with actionable intelligence necessary to make multifaceted changes to the existing public administration and public services. Effective and innovative use of open and big data analytics can positively impact government’s operations, public service delivery, and relationships with citizens. The government data and analytics landscape is rapidly changing in part due to the growing adoption of open data, social media, Internet of Things (IoT), AI, blockchain, and cloud computing in government. To date, data analytics in government have been deployed to fight fraud and abuse in tax and welfare benefits services, develop safer and more efficient public transportation, fight crimes and reduce operational costs as well as to predict disaster impacts in the local government areas and epidemic spreading across national borders. Despite the growing anecdotal evidences and practices in this domain, there is still the paucity of digital government research that links the use of open and big data and analytics in government to generating actionable intelligence in public policy and services that may enhance public value creation.

• TRACK 2: Open Government Innovations
  Track chairs: Mila Gasco-Hernandez (mgasco(at)ctg.albany.edu), Fatemeh Ahmadi Zeleti, Marijn Janssen

  Governments around the world have taken up the challenge of opening their data to achieve an open, transparent and accountable government while enabling data-driven innovation and improvement of citizens’ services and quality of life. Opening more datasets will help identify potential biases and fraud, lead to more competition between potential service providers, ensure more quality public services, and increase citizen trust in government. At the same time institutional changes are necessary to fully become an open government and processes and procedure should be in place. Open data technologies are complemented by data analytics and AI techniques. AI is currently enjoying a renaissance in industry and rising fast on governments agendas. AI innovations are already transforming the way governments operate, make decisions, and deliver public services. For this, steps are needed to ensure this is done in a more effective and transparent way that reassures citizens that these systems will produce fair outcomes, as well as higher quality services (e.g. by making the underlying data on how AI systems make decisions available). To successfully achieve this, new research on approaches and mechanisms necessary for fostering AI innovation and implementation by governments for a greater transparency, accountability, service delivery, and citizen’s trust are needed.

• TRACK 3: Smart Cities in the Age of AI
  Track chairs: Soon Ae Chun (Soon.Chun(at)csi.cuny.edu), Leonidas Anthopoulos, Dongwook Kim

  Industry 4.0 technologies, combined with open data, are pushing cities to become smarter and intelligent cities, promising to create an innovative physical, social and economic environment to improve quality of life for citizens and to bring disruptive transformations in governance. The rapid proliferation of intelligent machines, backed by advanced AI models, Big Data, ubiquitous sensors and IoT devices, can create self-responsive and self-evolving services but raise questions about the scope of city transformation and about the role of governments and citizens in their daily operations and interactions. For instance, faster Big Data processing and more secure decision making are required by governments in their role to enhance the local social good; but more sophisticated and collaborative intelligent machines need to be carefully governed to achieve fair and responsible innovations for citizens and businesses. This track invites research results and practices of smart cities in the era of intelligent algorithm-driven automation and emerging cognitive robots. Topics include, but are not limited to, smart city platforms, smart city implementation strategies and success indicators; smart government; smart city service innovations and impacts; smart digital citizen identity; citizen’s behavior modeling; citizen engagement, industry 4.0 technologies; digital transformation, smart and connected communities; governance and policy issues of intelligent machines and man-machine interactions; security, ethics and privacy issues; novel sharing and interactions in intelligent cities; smart city infrastructure and standards; applications and collaborations based on the IoT and, smart sensors; Big Data analytics; civic technology movement, and intercity and intergovernmental collaborations; Machine learning, Deep Learning, AI, Blockchain, AR/VR and Robotics for cities and governments.

• TRACK 4: Beyond Bureaucracy: Ethics of Bureaucracy and New Models of Governance
  Track chairs: Alois Paulin (alois(at)apaulin.com), Adeyinka Adewale, Zach Bastick

  The track aims to outline and discuss challenges along the boundaries of society, technology, and governance, which reach beyond established e-governance / e-democracy research paths and priorities. Where well-established research ambitions in fields such as e-government / e-governance / e-democracy focus on providing and/or studying technology that supports the work and mission of government agencies and governmental / political agents, “Beyond Bureaucracy” addresses the question how technology can empower citizens and the conceptual sovereign-body to actively control (rather than passively observe) public-domain agencies and agents. The track aims to outline the pending technological (design science) challenges, promotes the economic potentials of new technological ecosystems, discusses ethical implications of existing and potential future models of public governance, and serves as a platform for pro/con deliberations on Beyond Bureaucracy thought and knowledge.

• TRACK 5: Artificial Intelligence for Good
  Track chairs: Sehl Mellouli (sehl.mellouli(at)sio.ulaval.ca), Adegboyega

  Artificial intelligence brings new techniques and tools such as machine learning, natural language processing, or robotics that can be applied to different domains such as transport, healthcare, security, or energy. In particular, AI has significant potentials to reduce the administrative burden associated with interactions between citizens and public administrations and in enabling the design and implementation of highly personalized intelligent services that positively impact citizen satisfaction. AI solutions based on analysis of the data collected from citizens can be exploited to deliver a range of services using technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for pre-populating forms, automating translations, request routings and handling of citizen enquiries. Other AI solutions based on conversational Chatbots could be used to provide assistance to citizens in navigating online service portals. Public administrations have also deployed solutions based on advanced data analytics and deep learning to uncover unusual patterns in social welfare services claims. Despite this advance, application of AI technologies in the government and society is still in its infancy. For example, while AI solutions such as RPA and Chatbots are increasingly being used in the back-offices of a number of public agencies, the deployment of these technologies in direct citizen interactions at the front office will take a few years. This track aims to attract contributions that will investigate how AI can be used in governments at different levels and what AI can add to governments. Besides research papers, practical papers reflecting success and failures of practical applications of AI are welcome.

• TRACK 6: Blockchain and Transformational Government
  Track chairs: Svein Ølnes (svein.olnes(at)vestforsk.no), Jolien Ubacht, Ramzi El-Haddadeh, and Lemuria Carter

  In the past few years, researchers and practitioners have highlighted the potential of Blockchain (BC) and distributed ledger technology to revolutionize government processes.  Blockchain technology enables distributed power and embedded security. As such, Blockchain is regarded as an innovative, general purpose technology, offering new ways of organization in many domains, including e-government for transactions and information exchange. However, due to its very characteristics of peer to peer information exchange, its distributed nature, the still developing technology, the involvement of new actors, roles, etc., the implementation of blockchain applications raise issues that need governance attention. On the one hand, governments explore BC applications for their own processes. Agencies across the globe have launched blockchain initiatives to transform public sector services and procedures. These initiatives have implications for citizen trust, privacy, inclusion and participation.  Piscini et al. (2016) state “Like the Internet reinvented communication, blockchain may similarly disrupt various governments operations.” On the other hand, governmental organizations also need to address the limitations and challenges of BC as an innovation that potentially has far reaching consequences in society. This requires a thorough understanding of the BC design principles, the possible applications in the domain of e-government and the exploration of governance mechanisms to deal with the limitations and challenges of the BC technology when used in a myriad of sectors, ranging from the financial and business sector to the social domains of healthcare and education. 

• TRACK 7. From Data Intelligence to Data Impacts: Tackling Public Problems with Data
  Track chairs: Iryna Susha (Iryna.susha(at)oru.se), Efthimios Tambouris, and Yushim Kim

  Governments are experimenting with using different data – open/closed, big/small, public/private etc. – for improving their services to citizens, solving policy problems, and informing their decisions. As much of relevant data and data expertise reside outside the government realm, governments are more than ever required to work together with different actors in other sectors – businesses, non-government organizations, academia, citizens etc. There are however diverse challenges to acquire and access the right data and transform data insights into positive results on the ground. This has to do with making sense of the insights, overcoming data bias, mitigating data risks, ensuring legitimacy, fostering trust, to name a few. This track solicits research papers, case studies, policy papers focusing on the role of data and its use to improve citizens’ lives by addressing issues in organizations, communities, and societies. We invite research from a wide spectrum of disciplines and approaches inquiring into the socio-technical, organizational, regulatory, societal, ethical and other aspects of data.  

• TRACK 8: Social Media and Government
  Track chairs: Andrea Kavanaugh (kavan(at)vt.edu), Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan

  Future trends in social media and government point to new synergies, as well as disruptions, among public agencies and users. The use of social media tends to improve the delivery of online services as a result of personal communication with users, among other factors. But such use may also decrease interaction with segments of a population. There is emerging evidence that the use of social media for political participation is not as strongly correlated with higher socio-economic status as the use of "traditional" Internet for political participation. That is, social media seem to broaden and diversify participation in collective problem solving and governance beyond the well-educated, higher income citizens, to a more latent, but still informed and interested public. Since social media support discussion among users’ existing social networks, among others, they facilitate exchange among trusted family members, friends, and interest groups. Such exchanges may tend to resemble echo chambers, but there is also counter-evidence that users are exposed to a mix of perspectives via social media. Many users of social media may not be aware of the (technical) mechanisms to protect their own privacy, consequently this leads to the blurring of the concept of private and public space and raises ethical issues about personalization and e-profiling. Other users, such as the digital natives, are more aware of the mechanisms to protect their privacy, but may discount the consequences of e-profiling and its use by government or business. The research questions raised include the role of government in mitigating negative externalities and other consequences of online participation and the appropriateness or adequacy of checks and balances on governance processes intended to protect citizens and non-governmental organizations.

• TRACK 9: Maturity and Sustainability of Open Governmental Data
  Track chairs: Tobias Siebenlist (tobias.siebenlist(at)uni-duesseldorf.de) and Agnes Mainka

  Providing open data sets through open data portals is not enough. To achieve a lasting solution for the administration as well as for citizens maturity and sustainability of Open Governmental Data (OGD) are viable factors. Maturity can be measured for example based on a five-stage model (Moon, 2002) or based on the two key indicators Open Data Readiness and Portal Maturity (Carrara, Nieuwenhuis & Vollers, 2016). Using these models, the state of maturity can be measured and open data providers categorized regarding their open data activities. Sustainability on the other hand can be investigated following the recommendations by Sasse et al. (2017), which are mainly: governance frameworks, funding, open source software and portability, reports for a reliable data supply and metrics for measuring progress. Besides these specialized models and recommendations, the 5-star deployment scheme for open data from Berners-Lee (http://5stardata.info) can be seen as a general scheme for the improvement of the provision of open data. Another perspective is the usage of Open Governmental Data for sustainable development. Open Governmental Data can be used to measure the progress of achieving the SDGs on different administrative levels. Maturity and sustainability promote each other. AI requires reliable data to function (European Data Portal, 2018). If maturity and sustainability are given, applications can be built on this solid basis, for example in the smart city area, and existing open governmental data can be analyzed. The importance of these factors grows as more open data sets are published, new portals are set up and existing solutions are maturing. The diversity of both factors facilitates a broad range of aspects that can be covered within this session.

• TRACK 10. Organizational Factors, Adoption Issues and Digital Government Impacts
  Track Chairs: Jing Zhang (JIZhang(at)clarku.edu), Michael Ahn, and Lei Zheng

  The adoption and implementation of new ICTs by public organizations is influenced by organizational factors such as the availability of resources (i.e. funding, infrastructure, technological knowledge, and personnel), leadership, trust, stakeholder involvement, organization’s structure and culture, as well as inter-organizational dynamics if the initiative cut across multiple organizations. Similarly, the adoption of ICTs in government and society has generated important impacts on the organizational processes, effectiveness, and innovativeness of public organizations. In this context, this track solicits research that examines the organizational factors that influence the adoption and implementation, and impact of new and emerging innovative technologies such as smart governance, open data, social media, citizen-centric technologies, virtual collaborative work platforms, AI, and other novel technologies that rely on open and large data sets. Furthermore, this track seek research on the adoption of innovative policies or practices that seek to facilitate the strategic use of various ICTs by public organizations.

• TRACK 11: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Digital Government
  Track chairs: Robert J. Domanski (rdomanski(at)sbs.nyc.gov), Teresa M. Harrison, Evgeny Styrin

  Artificial intelligence, data science, and associated computational strategies are becoming deeply integrated into nearly every aspect of public policy and government management.  These strategies, encompassing integrated data sets, machine learning, predictive analytics, and others, have the potential to yield great benefits, but also pose substantial challenges to privacy, autonomy, governance, equity, and fairness.  In this track, we invite scholarly papers that explore the ethics of computational strategies in digital government.  The track’s objectives will be to 1) identify real-world examples/cases of real or potential ethical problems, 2) seek to place such cases in the context of existing ethical frameworks for analysis, 3) create actionable recommendations for professional developers and digital government practitioners, and finally, 4) institutionalize recommendations in digital government research and practice.

• TRACK 12: Contextualized Digital Government for Policy Objectives
  Track chairs: Tomasz Janowski (tomasz.janowski(at)pg.edu.pl), Elsa Estevez, and Peter Parycek

  The aim of this track is to advance the understanding of how Digital Government pursues policy-level outcomes in different institutional, sectoral or socio-economic contexts. Of interest are, among others, the design, performance and evolution of context-specific Digital Government; determinants, mechanisms and experiences with Digital Government contextualization; contextual features that enable or disable successful context-specific Digital Government; interaction and collaboration between Digital Government in the “neighboring” contexts; Digital Government context adaptation, Digital Government context-to-context transfer; synergy between Digital Government across contexts; coordination between context-specific Digital Government to fulfil common policy objectives; Digital Government design for context versus Digital Government design for reuse, etc.

• TRACK 13: People, Government and Algorithms: Emerging Forms of E-Engagement with Artificial Intelligence
  Track Chairs: Claudia Cappelli (claudia.cappelli(at)gmail.com), Cristiano Maciel & Flavia Bernardini

  Open data constitute an important source of information to bring transparency in public organizations and is a prerequisite to e-participation and e-engagement. However, manipulating, processing and interpreting the available data seems to be a task usually possible to experts in information technologies, although essential to the exercise of citizenship. In this context, Machine Learning algorithms and other Artificial Intelligence techniques may help citizens to better understand data, improving transparency. On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence techniques and methods can support other ways of e-engagement, being part of recommender and collaborative systems, and information systems for decision making processes. In this context, techniques, methods and tools for allowing e-engagement by citizens are requested. Major topics in this track involves discussing methods, techniques and tools based on artificial intelligence techniques and methods that can support or contribute to achieve e-engagement. Other issues related to this are welcome too.

• TRACK 14: Smart and Networked Governance, Smart Regulations, Compliance Intelligence, and Administrative Transparency
  Track Chairs: Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar (manuelp(at)ugr.es) & Hans Jochen Scholl

  In the last years, governments have changed their attitudes from non-transparent backroom politics to issue to proactively make publicly accessible huge amounts of data from government operations and government data collections, especially through open government initiatives. The blockchain technology, initially known for supporting electronic currency transactions, is emerging now as a means to fight corruption and increase citizens’ trust in governments, affecting overall governance in public sector entities. Nonetheless, the traditional models of policy making and governance have little, if ever, changed, but citizens have a right to know the legislation under consideration, the options and alternatives on the table and the impact of this legislation on their lives, among other concerns. In this regard, the nowadays movement of the smart and networked governance reshapes and amends traditional Western-style democratic governance to deal with major challenges of the 21st-century Knowledge Society, which include growing complexity and uncertainty, the need for building new competencies and the need for achieving societal resilience. Important facilitators of smart governance are “smart regulations”, which uses modern technologies for monitoring the enactment and enforcement of these regulations for improving government transparency and accountability. Therefore, this track seeks to capture papers addressed to analyze theoretical foundations of smart governance, smart regulations, and compliance intelligence and the use of blockchain technology in its use for smart governance, smart regulations, smart auditing, and smart external and insider threat detection.

Panels

Panel proposals may address themes related to any of the tracks for the conference. Additionally, we welcome panel proposals that put a spotlight on practice and application. Proposals from practitioners at all levels of government featuring experiences with, perspectives on, and evaluations of digital government practice are encouraged. Individuals interested in submitting panel proposals are invited to consult the panel chairs about their ideas prior to developing their submissions. Please send expressions of interest for panel development to: j.ubacht(at)tudelft.nl

Posters and Demonstrations

The poster session, held in conjunction with the system demonstrations, allows presenters to discuss research in progress, application projects, or government policies and program initiatives in one-to-one conversations with other participants at the conference.

Doctoral Colloquium

The Doctoral Colloquium is a full-day forum in which Ph.D. students discuss their work with each other and with senior faculty from a variety of disciplines associated with digital government research. The colloquium is planned for Tuesday, June 18, 2019. We welcome applicants from a broad range of research areas relevant to digital government. Ideally, student participants will have completed one or two years of doctoral study or progressed far enough in their research to have a structured proposal idea and perhaps some preliminary findings, but have not reached the stage of defending their dissertations. We expect students at this stage of study will gain the most value from feedback on their work and from the general discussions of doctoral programs and scholarly careers. Although there is no fee for the colloquium itself, students are expected to register for and attend the full conference. Participation is limited to 8-10 students. The colloquium will encompass three kinds of activities:

• Presentations of individual student research followed by in-depth discussions led by faculty mentors.
• Informal discussions and networking activities.
• If time permits, brief plenary presentations by senior faculty on digital government research themes as well as on planning and managing dissertations and careers.

The colloquium is built around discussion of each student’s work. To accomplish this, each student will read and give a short presentation and commentary on another student’s paper. Each author will then add to the presentation of his or her work, followed by extensive small group discussion.

The application deadline is April 15, 2019. Accepted students will be notified by May 15, 2019. To apply:

1- please follow the submission guidleines and requirements available on this website: http://dgsoc.org/dgo-2019/doctoral-colloquium/

2- Once you have all the material ready, submit them as a single PDF document to the doctoral colloquium track of the dg.o2019 submission site at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dgo2019

Publication

All accepted management or policy papers, research papers, student papers, panels, posters, and system demonstrations will be published in the printed proceedings and included in the ACM digital library and the DBLP bibliography system. Selected papers will be invited for a journal special issue. There will be several special issues related to the conference, including:

• Government Information Quarterly (GIQ)
• Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (JTAER)
• Transforming Government: People, Process, Policy (TGPPP)
• International Journal of E-Government Research (IJEGR)
• Information Polity
• International Journal of E-Planning Research
• International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age (IJPADA)