New Book on ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling

A new title was published by NTUA and Bookstars publishing on Governance and Policy Modelling.  Edited by Yannis Charalabidis, Fenareti Lampathaki and Dimitris Askounis, the book is titled "Paving the way for future research in ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling" and contains several chapters on how information technology can assist governance.

Taken from the preface:

"This book is a result of the collaborative effort of several internationally renowned policy scientists, complex system theorists, governance researchers, economists, management science and ICT experts, under the guidance of the CROSSROAD team.

Seville, Athens, Brussels, Lausanne and Samos Island have been welcoming venues for this group, offering opportunities for highly innovative and productive brainstorming. But, clearly, the on-line deliberation toolset deployed by CROSSROAD was the key differentiating factor, engaging several hundred researchers, public sector decision-makers, industry representatives and citizens.

May we all remember this collective experience in the times to come, a little proud that we tried the difficult road: not to just “do the things right”, but to make an attempt towards “doing the right things” for ICTenabled Governance and evidence-based decision making.

For us, for our children, for our society."

You may download the entire book as PDF here: http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/files/2010/02/CROSSROAD_Book-vf-allinon.pdf

You may cite this work as following:

Charalabidis Y., Lampathaki F., Askounis. D.: «Paving the way for Future Research in ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling», pp. 1 - 159, ISBN 978-960-6815-92-2, Bookstars Publishing, 2012

The 3rd Samos Summit 2012 on Open Data and Interoperability

More than 80 high-level ICT experts and decision makers from 20 countries participated in the international Samos 2012 Summit on “Open Data and Interoperability for Governance, Industry and Society”, that took place from 2nd  to 6th  July 2012 in  the island of Samos.

The Samos 2012 Summit on Open Data and Interoperability was co-organised by the University of Aegean, the Greek Interoperability Centre of the National Technical University of Athens, the ENGAGE eInfrastructures project (co-funded by the European Commission) and the ENSEMBLE Support Action (under the auspices of the Future Internet Enterprise Systems cluster of DG Connect), in order to foster international cooperation and strive for a new research and practice agenda in open data, collaborative governance, enterprise interoperability and future internet systems.

With an emphasis on Open Data, Interoperability and a new participative governance model for the public sector, the enterprise and within a connected, inclusive society, the Samos Summit was a first-class opportunity to see, interact with and influence cutting-edge European ICT research projects and initiatives.

The Samos Summit participants came from more than 20 countries, representing research and development centres of Google, IBM, Microsoft, Intrasoft International, Engineering, TXT, Whitehall Reply, Athens Technology Centre, Fraunhofer, Poznan supercomputing centre, Cycorp and more.  Representatives from several collective bodies and organizations joined the discussions and workshops of the Summit including W3C, ISA (European Commission unit for interoperability), EGI (European grid infrastructure), the Hellenic Parliament and Greek, Austrian, Slovenian, Spanish, Italian  public sector / eGovernment units.  See the List of Participants for more information.

The key messages of the Summit, as presented in the Samos Declaration, put the emphasis on the following actions:

• Raise the legal and administrative barriers which prevent the spreading of open data
• Support research on metadata, core vocabularies and visualization, as new ways of discovering and using open data
• Promote innovation and entrepreneurship on open data applications for the public
• Support open data use by science, in a global effort to reach evidence-based decision making on societal problems
• Promote scientific approaches in solving interoperability issues, and especially the Interoperability Scientific Foundations
• Strive for open data and interoperability “killer-apps”, in order to illustrate the power of ICT tools towards wider audiences
• Foster collaboration among scientific communities, industry, SMEs, public sector and citizens, towards an ecosystem where the immense potential of open, interoperable data will be exploited

For more information and all the presentations and workshops of the Samos 2012 Summit visit: www.samos-summit.org

Samos 2012 Participants, outside Karlovassi Town Hall.

(with Uni Aegean students / researchers dancing team)

Participants at the Conference Site - Doryssa Hotel




Tweet Report #1: Tweets per user (1662 total in 3 days)

Tweet Report #2: Tweets per device (iOS rules...)

Tweet Report #3: Tweets (1662) vs retweets (2000+)

Tweet Report #4: Most common words in tweets

A simple metadata schema for Open Data Apps

Having developed quite a number of open data / mobile apps at the University of Aegean and National Technical University of Athens, I was glad to listen to Nikos Loutas ( @nikosloutas ) presentation at the "Uses of Open Data" workshop in Brussels, organised by the CrossOver project.
His proposal for structuring a simple metadata schema for Open Data apps made me reach for my notes on classifying student apps at Uni Aegean.  So, here is a 10-attributes simple schema that could help potential users search and find apps on the web:

•   country: the country or countries covered by the app

•   region: the region/state/prefecture

•   city: the city covered by the app

•   language: the languages supported 

•   sector: the specific sector(s) the app is targeting

•   linkMode: is the app using Static or Dynamic data?

•   runtimeEnv: Web / Mobile

•   mobileOS: iOS / Android / WinM

•   visualisationMeans: Maps / Charts / Graphs 

•   licencing: free / payment  needed

New Book on t-Government by Emerald

Transformational Government Through eGov Practice: Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Technological Issues

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Editors:

Mahmud Akhter Shareef, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada
Norm Archer, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Canada
Yogesh K. Dwivedi, Swansea University, UK
Alok Mishra, Atilim University, Turkey
Sanjay K. Pandey, School of Public Affairs & Administration, Rutgers University, USA

The progression of information and communication technology (ICT) eGovernment systems has substantial implications for the future of government as we know it. eGov presents major challenges and advantages for policy makers as fundamentally different nations are adopting ICT in public administration reforms in order to capitalize on the benefits of transformational government or electronic government technology.

This book investigates the modern political, technological, economic, social, and cultural issues of transformational government. It discusses in detail how interaction through advancing technology such as e-participation, mobile government, social media, web 2.0, and cloud computing has been successfully incorporated into eGov practice. International in scope this book gives practical examples and case studies of eGov implementation in countries across the globe and is the essential reference text for this important topic.

See my "selected" entries from the table of contents:

REFLECTING TEN YEARS OF E-GOVERNMENT – A PLEA FOR A MULTIMETHODOLOGICAL RESEARCH AGENDA
Sebastian Olbrich

Innovative and Trustful Environments for Joint Governance Policy Making
Athanasios Karantjias, Dimitrios Papanikas and Nineta Polemi

TOWARDS NEW WEB 2.0 BASED MULTI-CHANNEL APPROACHES TO
E-PARTICIPATION
Yannis Charalabidis, Euripidis Loukis

ADOPTION CHALLENGES OF INTRODUCING AND IMPLEMENTING SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE (SAAS)
Marijn Janssen and Anton Joha

Transformational Services: a case study in the Greek public administration
Teta Stamati, Thanos Papadopoulos, and Drakoulis Martakos

ONLINE AND OFFLINE NETWORKS IN PUBLIC SECTORPOLICY: EXPLORING
REQUIREMENTS FOR WEB 2.0
Nick Letch and Jane Klobas

The rise of participative technologies in government
Eric Welch

The Extended Semantic Web Conference 2012

The Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC) is a major venue for discussing the latest scientific results and technology innovations around semantic technologies.

The Extended Semantic Web Conference 2012 (ESWC 2012) takes place from May 27, 2012 to May 31, 2012 in Heraklion, Crete, Greece.

In the context of this year's ESWC, the 1st International Workshop on Common Value Management (CVM2012) addressed the core challenges of Brand and Reputation management, focusing upon issues like:

• Broadcasting, e.g.: web sites, news, email, RSS feeds, Twitter, chats, blogs
• Sharing of information items such as: booksmarks, images, slides, and videos
• Collaboration through wikis
• Group communication and interaction through sites such as Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, XING, and a multitude of specific recommendation and feedback places for certain vertical domains.
• Semantic-based Dissemination through formats such as microdata, RDF, RDFa, and SPARQL; and vocabularies such as Dublin Core, foaf, and GoodRelations, schema.org, etc.

CVM Workshop Speakers and Chairs

My presentation "On new ways to generate value 'from and for' society with ICT" covered issues around social media applications in politics, going beyond the typical service systems, and touching upon issues like: 

• Text mining / Opinion Mining / Sentiment Analysis / Issue Extraction
• Non-moderated sentiment analysis
• Crowdsourcing applications in solving societal problems
• Hack-tivism and community activity 
• Simulation of large(r) societal problems, through open, self-adapting models 

For more information on CVM 2012 please visit: http://cvm2012.sti-innsbruck.at/

For more information on ESWC 2012 please see: http://2012.eswc-conferences.org/about-eswc-2012