Dear All,

Government of India with UNESCO and the United Nations University’s unit on policy-driven electronic governance are organizing the 10th edition of ICEGOV- The International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance- in March 2017, in New Delhi.

The objectives of the ICEGOV series resonate with the participative and inclusive ethos and intent of our flagship Digital India programme, which, under the guidance and leadership at the highest levels in the country, has amplified the focus on e-governance with major thrusts on infrastructure for electronic connectivity, access to e-services in real time, and digital empowerment of citizens.
ICEGOV events feature rich academic, capacity-building and network programme of keynote lectures, plenary discussions, paper tracks (that include tutorials, paper sessions and workshops), thematic sessions, invited sessions, poster exhibitions, and doctoral colloquia, all built from submitted or invited contributions by researchers and experts from around the world.

We are happy to announce that the First Call for Papers for the 10th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2017) is now available and the conference is welcoming paper submissions.

ICEGOV2017 will take place in New Delhi, India, between 7-9 March 2017, under the theme “Building Knowledge Societies- From Digital Government to Digital Empowerment”.

For more information, please do not hesitate to write to [email protected] or visit the conference website: http://www.icegov.org

We look forward to your paper submission and to meet you in New Delhi in March 2017!

With kind regards,

The ICEGOV2017 Team

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ICEGOV2017 – FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS
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DIRECT LINK for DOWNLOAD:
https://www.icegov.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ICEGOV2017_Call_for_Papers.pdf

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1. Introduction

Knowledge Societies empower citizens to use the facilities available through digital infrastructures to have the freedom to live their lives in the manner they want to live. Governments, civil society and private enterprises often see their role as enablers of the knowledge society by providing needed services, support and products. Governments have overwhelmingly adopted digital means to ignite and sustain this empowerment. Responding to social, economic, political and other pressures, they use digital technology to innovate their policies, processes, structures and interactions with partners and citizens alike, and institutionalize such innovations over time. Four waves of Digital Government innovations emerged: 1) Digitization – improving internal government operations and delivering better public services, 2) Transformation – facilitating administrative and institutional reform in government, 3) Engagement – engaging citizens and non-state actors in policy- and decision-making processes and 4) Contextualization – supporting policy and development goals in specific sectors and localities. Focused on creating conditions for self-governance and self-development on the local, sectorial and national levels, the Contextualization stage is directly relevant to Knowledge Societies.

The challenges facing researchers and practitioners today have to do with ensuring that the digitalization in society leads to transformation and empowerment, and finally to positive, sustained development outcomes. Policy makers and decision makers in government have to understand and deal with a whole host of issues related to building Knowledge Societies, and this call-for-papers highlights many of these issues. The main purpose of ICEGOV2017 is to explore how Digital Government can lead to Digital Empowerment, relying on locally-appropriated Knowledge Societies as both the means and the end to such empowerment.

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

Following the earlier conferences in Macau (ICEGOV2007), Cairo (ICEGOV2008), Bogota (ICEGOV2009), Beijing (ICEGOV2010), Tallinn (ICEGOV2011), Albany (ICEGOV2012), Seoul (ICEGOV2013), Guimaraes (ICEGOV2014) and Montevideo (ICEGOV2016), 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 reviewer from 102 countries – 69% from academia, 18% from government, 9% from industry and 4% from international and other organization. Also, on average, every ICEGOV conference attracts 140 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. Submissions
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ICEGOV2017 invites submissions of original work including research, experience or both, not published or considered for publication elsewhere, that contribute to the conference theme “Building Knowledge Societies – From Digital Government to Digital Empowerment”. The submissions can be targeted at one of 12 defined tracks, the emerging topics track, the doctoral track and the poster track, as described in subsequent sections.

2.1. Track 1: Digitization
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Aimed at modernization, internal efficiency and access, Digital Government at the Digitization stage involves the development, operation and maintenance of the technological environment, including the availability of technological capabilities, services and infrastructure within and between government organizations. In this environment, Digitization entails the representation of data, documents and other information in digital formats, when previously held by government organizations in physical or analog forms; making such information available to staff, partners and other stakeholders within and outside a government organization in digital formats, when previously available to the same stakeholders in physical and analog forms; automating existing processes, services and the entire offices based on digitized information and its exchange through digital networks; and making the services accessible to citizens in digitized format and through digital networks, when previously accessible in physical and analog forms.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Administrative process automation
o Big data, linked data and data analytics
o Big data outlier handling
o Computer-supported government work
o Decision support systems in government
o Digital versus traditional channels
o Electronic public record management
o Electronic public service delivery
o Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
o GIS applications for decision support
o Government cloud computing
o Government enterprise architectures
o Government information networks
o Government information portals
o Government interoperability frameworks
o Government office automation
o Government-wide architecture
o Mass government data processing
o Management information systems
o Visual analytics for big data

2.2. Track 2: Transformation
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Digital Government at the Transformation stage aims at improving internal processes, structures and working practices of government organizations through digital technology. The improvement often takes place as part of a larger administrative and institutional reform in government, and aims at internal efficiency, effectiveness, rationalization, simplification and other reform-related goals. The reform includes but is not restricted to improvements pursued within a single organization – cooperation with other government organizations, even whole-of-government arrangements comprising entire sectors and levels of government, are pursued at this stage. The main mechanism to carry out such improvement is technological and organizational innovation, including a fundamental rethink of what a technology-enabled government, organization or sector does or should do in digital terms and how to align its business and technological developments. The main enabler to carry out such improvement is the digital and technological environment, including related capabilities and structures, established as part of the Digitization Stage.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Business process reengineering and integration
o Connected and networked government
o Digital Government competencies and frameworks
o Electronic contracting and procurement
o Electronic delivery systems for public services
o Emerging modes of digital communication
o e-Avatars and government organization
o e-Avatars and Knowledge Society transition
o Government change management
o Government Chief Information Officer
o Government information sharing
o Government knowledge retention
o Government knowledge management
o Government performance management
o Government stakeholder management
o Government workforce management
o Organizational and semantic interoperability
o Public-private partnerships
o Shared government services
o Whole of government structures and processes

2.3. Track 3: Engagement
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Digital Government at the Engagement stage aims at transforming the relationships between government and citizens, businesses and other non-government actors using digital technologies. The transformation aims at increasing access, convenience and effectiveness of public service delivery systems, engaging citizens in political and civil affairs, developing knowledge-based society and economy, and pursuing other high-value public policy goals. The Engagement stage is also part of a larger trend towards implementing the Digital by Default and Open Government principles, the letter 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. Realizing the Engagement Stage builds on the capacity of government organizations, thanks to the Digitization and Transformation stages, to interact with external actors and with each other through digital channels, to establish their presence and operations on various digital platforms, to collaborate across organizational boundaries, and to demonstrate performance improvements in technology-enabled internal operations.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Automated fraud detection
o Citizen consultation, ideation and scorecards
o Crowdsourcing and co-delivery
o Data-driven citizen journalism
o Digital collaborative accountability
o Digital oversight institutions
o Digital reasoning frameworks for social platforms
o Electronic rule-making
o Emerging modes of digital communication with citizens
o Expose and investigate services
o Online deliberation and discourse
o Open government data ecosystems
o Participatory budgeting
o Proactive release of government data
o Public bidding on government contracts
o Public-private-people partnerships
o Social enterprise for public service
o Technology-facilitated anticorruption
o Social media and cyber-wellness
o Volunteering for public service

2.4. Track 4: Contextualization
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Digital Government at the Contextualization stage supports 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. While the stage constitutes a major step beyond digitizing government (Digitization Stage), improving the internal operations of government (Transformation Stage) and improving the relationships between government and constituencies (Engagement Stage), it also builds on the earlier stages by putting their outcomes at the service of public policy and development. A major consequence of the development focus is specialization of Digital Government initiatives at this stage, including their objectives, design, operations and outcomes, to different local, sectorial and local-sectorial contexts. The combination of context-specificity and development objectives is the cornerstone of this stage.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Digital Government and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
o Digital Government and cross-sectorial policy requirements
o Digital Government and local and sectorial impact evaluation
o Digital Government and policy coherence for development
o Digital Government design for context versus design for reuse
o Digital Government for aligning national strategies with local needs
o Digital Government context adaptation
o Digital Government context-to-context transfer
o Enabling versus disabling Digital Government contextual features
o Local versus national Digital Government
o Multi-level Digital Government
o Sectorial Digital Government
o Sectorial versus multi-sectorial Digital Government
o Emergency – community response grids
o Healthcare – digital preventive healthcare
o Regulation – compliance automation
o Security – crime mapping and hotspot monitoring
o Social – digital social innovation
o Transport – mobile collaborative transport
o Waste – institutionalizing e-waste management

2.5. Track 5: Information Ethics
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Use of information systems within organizations raises issues of ethics related to privacy, monitoring, workplace harassment, power, accountability and transparency. These issues arise from the concerns of shared norms and values rather than from legal or regulatory issues. With the widespread digitalization of government departments and organizations, these issues have assumed prominence, particularly with respect to accountability, corruption and transparency. Issues of ethics are also culture specific, where aspects of privacy, sharing, collaboration, work routines, reporting, individuality, group membership and participation, public discourse entitlements, arguments and disagreements, amongst many others, are understood in the local cultural context and norms. These local norms often interact with the information systems that may mediate them, possibly leading to conflict, or emancipation.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Centralization of power in government with ICT growth
o Digital divide and access to government services
o Evolving values and ethics with regard to technology change
o Forms of corruption persisting in Digital Government
o Graft and kickbacks in procurement of ICT
o Impact of social networks on workplace behavior
o IT-mediated transparency and impact on corruption and graft
o Power asymmetry created by digital access and use
o Resistance to Digital Government
o Vendor dependence and conflict of interest in ICT procurement and deployment
o Information asymmetry created with digital access
o Evolution in reporting norms in government
o Conflict in resource access and use
o Resistance to change and modernity
o Evolution and change in workflow routines in government offices
o Norms of discourse over electronic media
o Norms of inter-agency/department collaboration
o Interpretations of access and sharing
o Ethnic identities and mediation through ICT
o Loyalty and group identity through ICT

2.6. Track 6: Open Government
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Governments around the world have taken up the challenge of opening and making transparent the data pertaining to their functioning and that of the public sector at large. Research questions revolve around achieving transformation through open data that serves the needs of citizens. Considerations include having adequate design of data storage, data governance and data retrieval that assists policy analysis and research, while being relevant, current, adequately contextualized. This theme also inquiries into issues of openness and transparency, their definitions and practical implementation issues, and their conflict with security and surveillance.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

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

2.7. Track 7: Digital Citizenship
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Digital citizenship refers to the norms of appropriate and responsible use of technology i.e. it defines what is considered appropriate technology usage. It is a concept which helps technology leaders, teachers and parents to understand what technology users, students and children should know to use technology appropriately. It provides a way to prepare different categories of technology users for a society full of technology. Discussions about digital citizenship are gaining momentum around the world due to the increasing need to guide different categories of technology users on how to act when online and what to teach to the next generation. With the growth of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and 1:1 initiatives in schools, there is a need to talk about responsible use of technology.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Creative Credit & Copyright
o Cyberbullying
o Digital access
o Digital and information literacy
o Digital commerce
o Digital communication
o Digital currencies
o Digital empowerment
o Digital etiquette
o Digital financial inclusion
o Digital health and wellness
o Digital law
o Digital rights and responsibilities
o Digital rights management
o Digital security and privacy
o Internet safety
o Lifelong universally verifiable digital identity
o Online presence
o Social media
o Social media and cyber wellness

2.8. Track 8: Digital Culture and Inclusion
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According to the UN, the value of E-government will increasingly be defined by its contribution to the development for all using benchmarks such as citizen-centricity, inclusiveness, connected government, universal access, and use of new technologies. However, there are still many cases of social exclusion or digital-divides of different social groups around the world due to the way the e-government concept is operationalized, and or inadequacies in execution. ICT constitutes an essential inclusion tool, for three reasons for it allows people, who are potentially at risk of exclusion, to make up because it affects both the macro-social and the individual sphere. Therefore, the inability of an individual or group to exploit new technologies rolled out by government, condemns the individual to a process of progressive social exclusion. Those excluded from the digital world, and thus excluded from the participatory perspective, are destined to become second- or third-class workers, students, or consumers. This theme calls for research contributions that promote ways of making E-government contribute to the development of all citizens.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Accessibility and usability of Digital Government systems
o Citizen-centric Digital Government services
o Designing and implementing Digital Government systems
o Evaluation of public sector information systems
o Gender and ICTs
o Governance and electronic democracy
o Connected and networked governance
o Digital Government systems in developing and transition economies
o Digital Government adoption and diffusion
o Digital divide and digital immigrants
o Digital exclusion and disempowerment
o Digital Government in multi-lingual and multi-cultural societies
o Digital Government for unserved or underserved groups
o Digital Empowerment as a tool of social entrepreneurship
o ICT for development
o Information availability and access in Digital Government
o Persons with Disabilities and ICTs
o Pervasive media
o Universal and ubiquitous access
o Women and ICTs

2.9. Track 9: Digital Healthcare and Education
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Governments around the world are engaged with providing healthcare and education facilities to citizens, at many levels. The use of digital technologies for providing and assisting with healthcare and education are growing. These facilities are a strong presence in many countries. Issues of research pertain to the access, quality, regulation, evaluation of these services, amongst many others. There are many challenges to providing these services and these constitute an active area of research.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

o Communities of practice in education
o Teacher-centered ICT education
o Design of massive open online courseware
o Local language use in ICT-based education
o Policies for ICT-based education
o Evaluation strategies ICT-based education
o Design of tele-education infrastructure
o Effectiveness of ICT-based education in schools
o Public-private partnerships and provision of ICT-based education
o Use and effectiveness of ICT in secondary and higher education
o Data standards for health records
o Design of telemedicine infrastructure
o Evaluation of digital technologies for healthcare
o Open source in education and healthcare
o Policies for telemedicine reach and access
o Primary, secondary and tertiary care through telemedicine
o Public-private partnerships and provision of ICT-based healthcare
o Trust and confidence in digitally mediated healthcare
o Choice vs Care aspects of telemedicine
o Smart-phone based healthcare provision

2.10. Track 10: Smart Cities, Villages and Regions
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A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple ICT solutions in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets namely but not limited to local departments information systems, schools, libraries, transportation systems, hospitals, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, law enforcement, and other community services. ICT allows city officials to interact directly with the community and the city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in the city, how the city is evolving, and how to enable a better quality of life. Smart cities are aimed at facilitating economic growth and improving the quality of life of people by enabling local development and harnessing technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens. Alongside development of smart cities, there is need to develop regions and villages to be smart too to reduce rural urban migration.
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