Thursday, September 29, 2011

The EU Digital Agenda discussion on Interoperability, Cloud and eID


My colleague David Osimo asked me, an assistant professor of eGovernance Systems in Aegean University, in Samos, to moderate an on-line discussion on Digital Agenda 2020 issues around Interoperability, Cloud and eID. This on-line group of experts and citizens will produce a  report on findings and actions proposed, including on-line contributions.

When I accepted the task, the first suggestion was to list a few sources of relevant background material and gather some existing on-line discussion forums.

So here we are:

Area I : Online material



Area 2: On-line forums and communities


 Also, check some more interoperability and cloud related sites: http://bit.ly/oE1S65 

Area 3: On-line discussion initiation
By looking at the main topics of the online discussion, we could depict Interoperablity (as a framework) and
e-Invoicing (as a specific interoperability and organisational challenge for enterprises). A classification of topics would yield:

Interoperability 
- standards
- frameworks
- national status
- approaches for eBus and eGov
- Break-through approaches


e - invoicing
status, barriers,technical implementations
- feedback form practice
- Break-through ideas

Then, on a more national level at local events in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, the discussion will evolve around cloud, eID and internet of things, to be integrated at a later stage:
  • e - Identity (frameworks, technical implementations, barriers, best practices)
  • Cloud Computing (typology, status for public, private and hybrid, PaaS-SaaS orientation, cloud interoperability)
  • Internet of things (standards, status of adoption, outlook)
It is easy to join the discussions at: http://linkd.in/n1rdIP 

Monday, September 19, 2011

Greek - Ukrainian delegation meeting on FP7 Research

A meeting of a Greek and Ukrainan delegation on research and development projects and initiatives was held on  9th September 2011, at NTUA premises in Athens.  Several Ukrainian State University and the Ukrainian Academy of Science were represented in this high-level meeting.

Projects presented in detail include:

- The PADGETS FP7 project on social-media based policy making

- The ENGAGE eInfrastructures project on Open Data

- The Greek National Interoperability Framework and the initiatives of the Greek Interoperability Centre

The two delegations agreed to proceed in strengthening the scientific collaboration between Greece and Ukraine in the areas of ICT, electronic Government and Interoperability.

View of the Greek - Ukrainian delegations meeting

Monday, September 12, 2011

Call for Papers: Special Issue on eParticipation - ISM Journal (ISI)


INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
An ISI-Indexed Journal / Taylor & Francis Group

Special Issue on:
European Research on Electronic Citizen Participation and Engagement in Public Policy Making

Guest  Editors

Euripidis Loukis
Assistant Professor
University of the Aegean
Greece
email: eloukis@aegean.gr
Yannis Charalabidis
Assistant Professor
University of the Aegean
Greece
email: yannisx@aegean.gr
Jeremy Millard
Senior Consultant
Danish Technological Institute
Denmark
email: jrm@teknologisk.dk

Aims and Scope
The rapid development and the growing penetration of digital technologies provide rich opportunities for more extensive participation and engagement of citizens in public policy and decision making and in general for increasing the influence of society on government. They offer possibilities for strengthening political deliberation and establishing new participatory models of governance through electronic means which reduce existing limitations associated with time, location, cost and physical presence.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have the potential to support the provision of information concerning government activities, decisions and public policies, and also to increase both the quantity and quality of consultation with the citizens. Also, ICT has the potential to support both top-down government initiatives and ground-up civil society ones, both aiming at enhancing public participation in the decision processes and improving interaction between society and government. ICT enable the collection of huge amounts of citizens’ knowledge on the problems and needs that public policies attempt to address, and on proposed courses of government action and legislation. At the same time ICT also enable the exploitation of this knowledge for the assessment of the impact of various policy options on society, so that governments can make better and more informed decisions.
However, it is necessary investigate to what extent this potential is actually exploited, what is the impact of the existing exploitation, and which contextual factors affect positively or negatively this impact. Furthermore, it is important to discover new ways of exploiting this huge potential and using ICT for increasing citizens’ participation and engagement in public policy making, and to proceed to pilot applications of them in ‘real-life’ cases and conditions in order to assess their value, and if necessary improve and optimize them.
Especially in Europe, due to its long tradition of social state characterized by strong interaction with the society and intervention in order to secure social welfare and support of weak groups (European Social Model), there is a strong interest in the above ideas. For this reason in the last ten years there has been extensive financial support by several institutions, such as the European Commission and the National and Local Governments, of research in this domain of ICT-supported/mediated citizen participation and engagement in public policy making for investigating the above research questions. It is quite interesting to reflect on the results and conclusions of this research, and attempt to exploit them both in Europe and in other parts of the world, probably with adaptations to local histories and political traditions.    
This Special Issue of ‘Information Systems Management’ solicits original high quality papers presenting this ‘European Research on Electronic Citizen Participation and Engagement in Public Policy Making’. Topics of interest in this area include, but are not limited to:

            Innovative forms of ICT use for supporting and enhancing citizens’ participation
            Advanced systems for structured high quality deliberation
            Social media platforms and their applications for supporting citizens’ participation
            Textual analysis technologies, ontologies and taxonomies
            Opinion mining and sentiment analysis
            Data and argument visualization technologies
            Federated content syndication systems for public participation
            Trend monitoring and policy analysis
            Policy modeling and impact assessment
            Data-powered collective intelligence and action
            Studying the impact and the overall value proposition of e-Participation
      Methods for the evaluation of e-Participation      
      Serious Games, simulation and virtual worlds for supporting policy making
            Case studies from e-Participation and e-Consultation
      Theoretical aspects towards a scientific base for ICT enabled Governance

Authors are invited to prepare original manuscripts of around 7500 words, exclusive of exhibits, according to the ‘Instructions for Authors’ web-page of the Journal:
At the end of each paper should be placed short biographical notes for all the authors, and also address for correspondence and e-mail address for the corresponding author.
Papers should be written in grammatically correct and coherent English. Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers will be refereed through a peer review process. All submissions must provide:
- an abstract (max of 75 words)
- at least 3 keywords
- full author names and affiliations
- brief author bios
- an email address for the corresponding author
Prospective authors are welcome to submit an abstract to the Guest Editors for preliminary feedback on the appropriateness of their planned manuscript.
Send your manuscript to the corresponding Guest Editor, Prof. Euripidis N. Loukis (eloukis@aegean.gr)

Schedule
            Submission deadline: November 15, 2011
            Completion of first review: January 15, 2012
            Revisions deadline: March 15, 2011
            Camera-ready deadline: April 15, 2012
            Tentative publication: Fall 2012

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

At the International eGOV IFIP Conference in Delft, 29 Aug - 02 Sep 2011

The AULA Conference Centre at TU Delft
The International eGovernment Conference (IFIP eGOV) took place in pleasant Delft, between Monday 29/8 and Friday 2/9, 2011.

Hosted in the main Conference Hall  (Aula Building) of the spacious TU Delft campus, the conference attracted almost 200 participants from academia, policy and industry. Main topics of the discussions for more than three days have been Open Data, Policy Modelling, Social Media applications in governance, electronic participation and more theoretical stuff in evaluation and assessment of e-governance status.


With Nitesh Barosa, at TU Delft - TPM Buildings
We had the chance to host the first Workshop on Open Data, opening the programme on Monday morning 09:00, with 30 participants.  A few hours after, I had the chance to visit the Technology - Policy - Management Group, whereour collaborating team from TU Delft is based, including Marijn Janssen, Nitesh Barosa, Anne-Fleur van Veenstra and more.


Visiting TU Delft even so early in the semester was a nice inspiration - seeing how students work and relax in a nice surrounding. The town has also been a nice pair to the conference site: easy, small enough to walk all over, full of bicycles and low buildings.

Maybe ideal for studying and teaching in Europe, I think.


Work and coffee, at Technology Policy and  Management building