New Book on Open Governance by Springer: Call for Chapter Proposals

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS

Empowering Open and Collaborative Governance:

Technologies and Methods for On-line Citizen Engagement

in Public Policy Making

A book to be published by Springer Verlag - http://www.springer.com

A book edited by:

Yannis Charalabidis

University of the Aegean, Greece

Sotirios Koussouris

National Technical University of Athens

Introduction

Moving towards the direction of open governance roadmaps as adopted worldwide, on-line citizen engagement stands out as a new domain, important both for decision makers and citizens. Over the last decade, there has been a variety of projects and initiatives powered by policy makers, researchers, ICT vendors and citizens, that are targeting the actively citizen involvement through various digital platforms and means.  Such attempts promote ideas and solutions that could help minimize the democratic deficit and to support the active re-engagement of citizens to the decision making process, thus making governance more open, transparent, interactive and trustworthy.

In parallel, new attempts for evidence-based decision making and citizen involvement now include methods for massive data visualization, interactive argumentation, linked governmental data as well as connected social media platforms and collaborative systems over cloud infrastructures.

Objective of the Book

This title aims at providing the latest research findings such as theoretical foundations, principles, methodologies, architectures, technical frameworks, cases and lessons learnt within the domain of open governance and on-line citizen engagement. The book will constitute a new approach to addressing the issue of implementing open collaborative governance solutions and initiatives, providing both research and practice results. Unique characteristics that distinguish the publication from existing titles are the systematic analysis of the domain, the all-around view of political, legal, technical and user-oriented aspects and the inclusion of reviews, case reports and evaluation of international initiatives. The book will contribute to the systematic analysis and publication of cutting-edge methods, tools and approaches for assisting the relevant stakeholders in their quest for a more efficient participative public policy debate, allowing the utilisation of the capabilities provided by ICT.

These research findings are organized along the following main areas of contribution:

·         Public policy debate foundations: Processes and methods for scoping, planning, evaluating and transforming citizen engagement

·         Information and Communication Technologies for citizen participation

·         Future research directions of open, collaborative ICT-enabled governance

Since Open and Collaborative Governance is a multi-disciplinary domain, new research challenges are bound to touch on Semantics, Social Media Platforms, Web Service Technologies, Social Sciences, Service Oriented Architectures and Model Driven approaches.

Target Audience

The audience of the book includes researchers and practitioners in the Electronic Governance domain, public administration officials, policy makers and decision drivers at local, national or international levels, engaged both in design and creation of policies and services, , university students and professors of Computer, Social, Political an Management sciences, ICT industry staff engaged in eGovernance and Policy Modelling projects and solutions, and participants of related FP7 research and CIP/PSP innovation projects.

Recommended Chapter topics

On “Public policy debate foundation”

·       Models & metrics for assessing the public debate at various level

·       Methods for the evaluation of eParticipation, from the policy maker, the administration, the citizen and the researcher/practitioner perspectives

·       Studying the impact and the overall value proposition of eParticipation initiatives

·       Case studies from eParticipation or other public policy debate implementations involving cross-country, multilingual deliberation

On “Information and Communication Technologies for citizen participation”

·       Tools for implementing large public debates

·       Textual analysis technologies, ontologies and taxonomies

·       Federated content syndication systems for public participation, enabling the deployment of ubiquitous, citizen-driven, open data infrastructures

·       Data and argument visualisation technologies

·       Sentiment analysis and opinion mining, trend monitoring and policy analysis

·       Social media platforms and their applications for supporting citizen participation

·       Serious Games, simulation and virtual worlds for facilitating Policy Modelling

On “Future research directions of open, collaborative ICT-enabled governance”

·       Theoretical Frameworks of eGovernance processes

·       Research on a Model-based collaborative governance

·       Data-powered collective intelligence and action

·       Addressing Digital Divide and Social Exclusion through eGovernance

·       Governmental Service Infrastructures

·       Future Internet and eGovernance

·       Theoretical aspects towards a scientific base for ICT enabled Governance

Submission Procedure

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before 1^st February 2011, a 2-3 page chapter proposal, in plain Word format, explaining the mission and contents of the proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by February 15, 2011 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by 1^st June 2011. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis.

Important Dates

Proposal Chapters Due:            1^st February 2011

Full Chapters Due:                     1^st June 2011

Camera – Ready Chapters Due: 1^st October  2011

Final Publication Due:                Winter 2011-2012

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically to:
Ass. Prof. Yannis Charalabidis

University of the Aegean
Lymperis Building, 83200 Karlovassi, Samos, Greece
e-mail: yannisx@aegean.gr

The CFC is also available as a PDF, here.