[EGOV LIST] DG.O 2023 change of location, date, theme and host, and Call for Papers

[Tomasz Janowski]

Dear Colleague,

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Digital Government Society had to change the location and date of the 24th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2023) from Tartu, Estonia to Gdańsk, Poland. The conference will take place during 11-14 July 2023 under the theme "Together in the unstable world: Digital government and solidarity". Our conference will be hosted by the Department of Informatics in Management, Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdańsk University of Technology. The call for papers is included below and available on the conference page https://dgsociety.org/dgo-2023/.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and meeting you in Gdańsk in July.

Many regards,
 
Marijn and Tomasz
 
-------------------------
 
Call for Papers

dg.o 2023: 24th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research

Together in the unstable world: Digital government and solidarity 

11-14 July 2023
Gdańsk University of Technology, Gdańsk, Poland
https://dgsociety.org/dgo-2023/


The Digital Government Society (DGS) will hold the 24th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research – dg.o 2023 – in Gdańsk, Poland, with a special focus on digital government and solidarity. The conference's main organizer is the Department of Informatics in Management, Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland.

Crisis upon crisis, from pandemic and war to climate change to democratic breakup, government institutions face rapidly changing service demands, unpredictable geopolitical environment, and challenges to their own legitimacy. They cannot address such crises alone without mobilizing adequate social response, even supported by advanced technology. In turn, such a response requires citizens to feel (and act upon) their responsibility toward each other, e.g., changing one's attitudes, behaviors, and lifestyles for collective well-being. It requires solidarity – the recognition that "we are all in this together". While different notions of "we" produce different variants of solidarity – universal, civil, social, or political, all variants are about relationships, intentionality, and sacrifice.

What the COVID-19 pandemic taught us is that the efficacy of any technical solution deployed to fight the pandemic, e.g., public messaging, policy innovation, regulatory action, technology platform, needs to be accompanied by a positive social reaction: social distancing, self-quarantine, self-protection restrain, community volunteering, and other expressions of social solidarity. But the pandemic also taught us that common threats and fear could both unite and disunite, leading to feelings and acts of greater solidarity or polarization. Public messaging amplified by social technology can balance or counter-balance such discourses. But technology can also help strengthen solidarity and social cohesion by fostering e-democracy, providing a voice to traditionally excluded groups, promoting equitable resource distribution, etc.

The conference aims to put the concept of solidarity at the center of the digital government debate. To this end, it focuses on how digital government can enhance solidarity and, conversely, how solidarity can enhance the efficacy of digital government in responding to global crises and local constituency demands.

The dg.o conference series is an established forum for presenting, discussing, and demonstrating interdisciplinary research on digital government, ICT and public administration, political participation, civic engagement, technology innovation, applications, and practice. Each year the conference brings together scholars recognized for their work's interdisciplinary and innovative nature, their contributions to the rigor of theory and relevance of practice, their focus on important and timely topics, and the quality of their writing.

IMPORTANT DATES

20 January 2023: Papers, workshops, tutorials, and panels are due
31 March 2023: Author notifications (papers, workshops, tutorials, panels)
1 April 2023: Application deadline for doctoral colloquium
15 April 2023: Posters and demo proposals due
24 April 2023: Poster/demo author notifications
25 April 2023: Final version of manuscripts due in EasyChair
1 May 2023: Doctoral colloquium notification / Early registration begins
20 May 2023: Early registration closes

OVERVIEW OF TRACKS

TRACK 1:  Data-driven Governance through Information Retrieval and Decision Support Systems  

Track Chairs: Charalampos Alexopoulos (University of the Aegean, Greece), Shefali Virkar (Danube University Krems, Austria)

The purpose of this track is to critically examine the interrelationship between advanced decision support systems and big data analytics in the pursuit of improved digital governance, together with the associated benefits, challenges and risks. This track encourages the submission of high-quality and original papers on the theory, experimentation, and practice of information retrieval and decision support tools and techniques towards better (data-driven) governance; this primarily includes sources of textual information but could also include numerical data and multi-modal information. This track addresses a range of similar or related research questions, topics and practices regarding sophisticated information retrieval infrastructures and advanced decision systems, support tools and services.
 
TRACK 2: Collaborative Intelligence: Humans, Crowds, and Machines

Track Chairs: Helen K. Liu (National Taiwan University, Taiwan), Lisa Schmidthuber (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria), Seok-Jin Eom (Seoul National University, South Korea)

The collaborative intelligence track aims to investigate how human, crowd, and machine can complement each other to enhance public services and policies, such as healthcare services, citizen-government communication, bias and discretion reduction, smart city planning, etc. However, while the adoption of AI may enhance the citizens’ participation experience, there are potential ethical issues and implementation challenges in designing an optimal collaborative intelligence that includes both human collective intelligence and artificial intelligence. The collaborative intelligence track invites researchers and practitioners to accumulate scholarly papers that explore the interactions of human, crowd, and/or machine. Possible topics include strategies for collaborative intelligence or platforms in the public sector, designs for machine and human interaction in public services or policy making, comparisons of outputs and bias from AI, experts, and/or collective intelligence, values in collaborative intelligence management and governance, best practices of collaborative intelligence in the public sector, ethical concerns or guidelines for applying collective intelligence, or other similar topics and relevant approaches.
 
TRACK 3: Innovative Services in Government: When Data-Driven Services Meet Evidence-Based Policy

Track Chairs: Hsin-Chung Liao (National Chengchi University, Taiwan), Hsien-Lee Tseng (National University of Taiwan, Taiwan)

The Innovative Services in Government track aims to investigate how public sectors can complement Services and policies by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as MyData, Once Only Principle (OOP), and application of single digital gateway, etc. To trigger these convenience services, civics data sometimes needs to exchange within government sectors (G2G), or to provide to private service providers (C2G2B). EU has published OOP which is to be fully implemented by the end of 2023. In 2019, the U.S. launched OPEN Government Data Act, taking a step further on implementation of opening government data. The Innovative Services in Government track invites researchers and practitioners to accumulate scholarly papers that explore the interactions of data application, data governance, and/or data policy. Possible topics include strategies for government open data sharing, data-driven services, data Principles, and best practices of public and private sector collaboration on data implementation, or other similar topics and relevant approaches.
 
TRACK 4: Cybersecurity in Public and Nonprofit Organizations

Track Chairs: Sukumar Ganapati (Florida International University, USA), Chris Reddick (University of Texas at San Antonio, USA), Michael Ahn (University of Massachusetts Boston, USA)

Cybersecurity has gained a renewed and increased significance for public and nonprofit agencies as they have been major targets of various cyber attacks, particularly in the context of work environments during the Covid-19 pandemic. As these agencies transitioned their operations from face to face work schedules to work from home during the pandemic, they have had to cope with increased security risks with digitization of their programs and provision of online services. Without adequate cybersecurity, the agencies are vulnerable. Ransomware attacks, for example, could cripple critical programs (e.g. education) and services (e.g. utility). Cybersecurity is not only a technical problem, but also an organizational issue. This track will examine the pedagogical, public policy, and organizational dimensions of cybersecurity in this context. What are the educational implications for public administrators and nonprofit managers? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the various cybersecurity frameworks (e.g. “zero trust”)? Are cyber-insurance policies adequate measures? What are the elements of organizational cyber-resilience? We invite papers that broadly deal with these questions in the context of public and nonprofit organizations.
 
TRACK 5: Design Models and Platforms for Trust Enhancing Smart Cities

Track Chairs: Leonidas Anthopoulos (University of Thessaly, Greece), Soon Ae Chun (City University of New York, USA)

Smart city utilizes the ICT to enhance living of local communities and make city operations sustainable against current and future challenges. The recent COVID-19 pandemic rapidly had to transition cities to virtual spaces where the ICT became the platform for work, socialization and transactions. However, this transformation did not utilize the smart city infrastructure designed with purpose for overall planning. The post-pandemic period finds cities to define their future strategies for transformation and innovations to serve citizens and businesses with the smart city infrastructure equipped with more advanced intelligent technologies to make cities more resilient to adversities and to promote better life. Citizens and the private sectors will be heavily rely on the smart city infrastructure.
 
TRACK 6: Social Media and Government

Track Chairs: Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan (Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico, Mexico), J. Ignacio Criado (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain), Loni Hagen (University of South Florida, USA)

The implications of social media and government are evolving with the evolution of technologies and advances in the field. As it has been experienced during the last years, this area of digital government research is one of the most dynamic as new platforms, metrics, audiences, uses, or impacts emerge almost every year. Recently, we have learned that opportunities for innovation and potential challenges emerge from the last evolutions of social media and government. Here, issues regarding TikTok or virtual reality, among other social platforms and areas, have abruptly emerged as a global players in the entertainment sector, promoting government and other actors to engage with new audiences. Finally, new political challenges, including the polarization of the public sphere, raise concerns about the potential harm of social media for our democratic communities. For this year’s theme, we especially will welcome papers related to safe and secure cross-border services and collaboration through social media platforms. In addition, we are open to other aspects of governments’ service delivery and social media, including theoretical and conceptual advancements, methodological and data innovations, or case and practical implications coming from diverse contexts. We will welcome papers on both traditional and emerging issues, including opportunities, risks, and policies in public services delivery in cross-national contexts, social media motivations to use and audiences, political mobilizations and polarization, social media contents and sentiment analysis, fake news, artificial intelligence and algorithms-based systems and virtual agents in government, instant messaging apps in government, entertainment platforms for political engagement, or social media for crisis and emergency management. Also, we will continue working on including exciting research questions, rigorous empirical studies, and in-depth case studies to enrich the theories, research methods, data, and available cases and practical applications in this research area.
 
TRACK 7: Cross-border governance and service impact assessment

Track Chairs: Robert Krimmer (University of Tartu, Estonia), Mihkel Solvak (University of Tartu, Estonia), Carsten Schmidt (University of Tartu, Estonia)

Fitting with the core theme oft he conference, the recent policy and regulatory initiatives of the EU, such as Digital Single Market Strategy, Single Digital Gateway, European Interoperability Framework and eIDAS 2.0, identify the need for digital cross-border integration in the EU. The achievement of the digital single market within the EU is challenging governments at all levels to transform or update their governance systems in order to establish the cross-border e-governance. The Single Digital Gateway Regulation (SDGR) and the underlying Once-Only Principle (OOP) outline that businesses and citizens in contact with public administrations must provide data only once. Until now many MS and associated countries have started to implement the OOP at the national level, but the cross-border implementation is still a work in progress. The SDGR as one of the cornerstones of the Digital Single Market for the EU will bust this development. This track will examine whether, and how these initiatives can foster further integration into a digital single market.
 
TRACK 8: Developing active citizenship to boost citizen engagement through digital government

Track Chairs: Edimara M. Luciano (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), Gabriela V. Pereira (Danube University Krems, Austria), Carmine Bianchi (Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy)

Citizen engagement has been mentioned as a barrier in several research focused on collecting more benefits from digital government strategies. Making public institutions open and transparent, and generating public value is a massive challenge that cannot prescind citizens’ participation in the process of thinking, discussing, modeling, approving, implementing, and evaluating public services and solutions. Consultation and participation processes have been bringing governments and society closer. However, there are new challenges to face, significantly in times when the trust of society in governments is compromised in many parts of the world and misinformation and disinformation issues are arising. Consequently, it is paramount to advance on understanding of engagement as an institutional, structural, social, cultural, and political phenomenon, as well as the individual cognitive process to decide to get involved at all levels, from town to nationwide public management discussion.
This track focuses on discussing citizen engagement through active participation of citizens in the public discussion aiming at improving digital public services and digital government impact. We invite contributions from various backgrounds and disciplines. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: Strengthening governance capacities for active citizenship; Frameworks, strategies, and nudges fostering citizen engagement; Digital government initiatives accomplishing engagement; Collaborative governance and collective decision-making processes; Soft policies for increasing participation and binding decisions; Antecedents and consequents of engagement and disengagement behavior; The role of leadership from government officials and citizens representatives; Active citizenship opposing patronizing approaches; Sense of belonging and social and political capital as drivers to active citizenship; Active citizenship contributions to social cohesion; and Engagement programs assessment.
 
TRACK 9: Beyond Bureaucracy: Self-Governance of the Public Sphere and Innovative Use of Technology by Civil Society

Track Chairs: Alois Paulin (University of Public Administration and Finance Ludwigsburg, Germany),  Robert Müller-Török (University of Public Administration and Finance Ludwigsburg, Germany), Zach Bastick (Harvard University, USA)

The “Beyond Bureaucracy” track explores innovations in e-government and e-democracy that place the citizen at the center of governance. While traditional lines of inquiry at the intersection of politics and technology focus on enhancing or supporting existing political institutions, there is an underexplored opportunity for citizens to use technology to shape the public sphere and to control government more directly. Internet optimists have long anticipated new, digital models of self-governance, including representative, direct, liquid, anarchic models. Critics have argued that technology cannot safely or desirably support greater citizen involvement. This track covers all aspects of direct, futuristic, radical, exploratory, and critical approaches to digital governance. These include the (un)desirability of using technology to support citizen self-governance; challenges to self-governance through technology; theoretical and empirical proposals; assessments of technologies to support governance; the impact of developing digital phenomena on self-governance (misinformation, bots, digital collective intelligence); and the ethical, technological, social, and political implications of existing and potential future models of public governance. The track also welcomes research and case studies on the innovative uses of technologies by NGOs and other non-government actors. The “Beyond Bureaucracy” track serves as a platform for pro/contra deliberations on the near and distant challenges and potentials of e-democracy.
 
TRACK 10: Tech Diplomacy: global partnerships for global good

Track Chairs: Nele Leosk (Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Estonia), Innar Liiv (TalTech, Estonia), Ingrid Pappel (TalTech, Estonia)

Digital technologies play an increasingly important role in our economies and societies and brought new opportunities into the lives of people around the world. That in turn also have become key competitive parameters that can shift the balance of power as well including challenges and obstacles presented by state security and state censorship, media regulations, organizational culture, personnel challenges. The goal of EU Digital Diplomacy is to secure the EU global role in the digital world, to protect its strategic interests and to promote its dynamic, human-centric regulatory framework for an inclusive digital transformation[1]. In terms of service digitalization and digital era, there exists a wide range of approaches based on other countries’ digitalization experiences, which might be considered when a country embarks on their own digitalization journey.
 
TRACK 11: Digital Transformation in Governments

Track chairs: Beatriz Barreto Brasileiro Lanza (CTG SUNY & IDB, Brazil), Thiago José Tavares Ávila (Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil), Maria Alexandra Cunha (Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil)

Digital transformation has become an essential part of the government’s strategic agenda, both at national and sub-national levels. Such governments seek to offer services through digital platforms with integrated citizen identification systems, digitization of governmental processes, with respect to the privacy of personal data, and digital inclusion of the most vulnerable population. However, digital transformation initiatives at the subnational level tend to present specific aspects when compared to national initiatives. On the one hand, this track highlights the challenges faced by subnational digital transformation initiatives in the public sector, as well as national governments that have acted to develop and integrate national digital transformation considering subnational aspects. On the other hand, it seeks to understand the capacities supporting digital transformation at the subnational level. The track’s objectives are: a) to identify real-world examples/cases of digital transformation projects at the subnational levels (states, regions, Länder, provinces, municipalities, etc.); b) discuss the challenges to develop a digital and integrated government considering national and subnational aspects, especially in federative countries; c) seek to explain these cases in the context of existing or new theoretical frameworks, and, d) create actionable recommendations for researchers, professional developers, and digital government practitioners at the national and sub-national level.
This topic stands out for prioritizing the investigation of digital transformation in subnational governments, seeking to understand and identify the most relevant aspects of subnational initiatives aimed at building more digital governments. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
•       Citizen’s digital and secure identification;
•       Protection of users’ personal data;
•       Development of new models aimed at the relationship between the government and the Citizen (Citizenship Relationship Management – CzRM), especially using multi or omnichannel experiences.
•       Promotion of transparency, openness, and sharing of public data with a view to endowing public sector business processes with greater intelligence and automation of repetitive tasks;
•       Incorporation of new technologies for the production and management of public sector knowledge such as Artificial Intelligence, as well as for increasing the security and trust of digital relationships, based on blockchain and similar technologies;
•       Mechanisms for social participation in improving and monitoring the quality of public service offerings, as well as promoting the role of citizens in proposing improvements in service delivery procedures and the development of public policies;
•       Collaborative governance instruments that provide greater stakeholder engagement in the value generated by the public sector, including the development of institutional arrangements and cooperation aimed at sharing and strengthening the capacities necessary for the development of the digital government;
•       Challenges of the digital divide in the digital government era;
•       Gender and Human Rights issues in the digital government era;
•       Institutional relations, cooperation, arrangements, and partnerships for Digital Government;
•       Federative relations for Digital Government development.
 
TRACK 12: Assessing and Realizing Artificial Intelligence in Government

Track Chairs: Sehl Mellouli (Université Laval, Canada), Marijn Janssen (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands), Adegboyega Ojo (Carleton University, Canada)

In the last years, governments are trying to increasingly using artificial intelligence (AI) to support decision-makers and policymakers. In this context, AI is providing several benefits to different public services across different sectors such as finance, healthcare, security, agriculture, transport, education, and manufacturing. AI is based on a set of methods and techniques including deep learning, neural networks, genetic algorithms, expert systems, natural language processing, robotics and knowledge representation and reasoning. These techniques are evolving rapidly and governments should be aware of these evolutions and find the ways to effective harness and manage them. In addition, Governments are not only looking for new applications of AI in automated decisions and improving policy-making but also at the impacts that AI can have on the different levels of government. Yet realization proves to be more cumbersome and there is a need for assessment of AI projects from various views. Hence, the purpose of this track is to investigate how AI is being implemented and adopted in governments at different levels, what AI is adding to governments and how to ensure that AI adoption in government is safe and beneficial to the public at large.
 
TRACK 13: Organizational Factors, Adoption Issues and Value Creation of Digital Government

Track Chairs: Jing Zhang (Clark University, USA), Chris Hinnant (Florida State University, USA), Luis F. Luna-Reyes (University at Albany, USA)

The adoption and implementation of new ICTs by public organizations have been 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. Similarly, the adoption of ICTs in government and society has generated important impacts on the organizational processes, effectiveness, and innovativeness of public organizations, as well as the new governance structure of the government and the societal impacts. This track solicits research that examines the organizational factors that influence the adoption and implementation, and investigate the impacts, especially the value creation, of new and emerging innovative technologies such as smart city, artificial intelligence, data analytics, big data, open data, social media, citizen-centric technologies, and other novel technologies. Furthermore, this track seek research contribute the theories and practices of the adoption of innovative policies or practices that seek to facilitate the strategic use of various ICTs by public organizations.
 
TRACK 14: Blockchain-based applications for e-Government 

Track Chairs: Jolien Ubacht (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands), Sélinde van Engelenburg (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)

Blockchain (BC) and distributed ledger technology (DLT) have the potential to improve government processes. Transactions and information exchange between governmental organizations (G2G), between business and government (B2G) as well as between governments and citizens (G2C) can be transformed by using blockchain-based applications. These applications can improve the efficiency of information exchanges (e.g. leading to less fraud and mistakes than paper based registrations) and can contribute to an inclusive society (e.g. by means of digital identities). In addition blockchain-based applications can support international public services for businesses and citizens alike.  The implementation of blockchain-based applications requires solid analysis of the entire information chain, including the involved stakeholders and interoperability with extant information architectures. Moreover, blockchain initiatives have implications for citizen trust, privacy, inclusion and participation that need to be addressed in the design of the blockchain based applications.  This track invites research that explores the impact and potential of blockchain-based applications in G2G, B2G and C2G processes that illustrate their contribution to public services and the creation of public values. We welcome use cases and a diversity in research designs, approaches and methodologies.
 
TRACK 15: Mobile Government and Cross-border Service Interoperability

Track Chairs: Thomas J. Lampoltshammer (Danube University Krems, Austria), Herbert Leitold (A-SIT, Austria), Gregor Eibl (Danube University Krems, Austria), Stefan Dedovic (University of Tartu, Estonia)

Until now, many Member States (MS) and associated countries have started implementing the Once-only Principle (OOP) at the national level, but the cross-border implementation is still a work in progress. The SDGR, one of the cornerstones of the Digital Single Market for the EU, will bust this development. There is considerable potential to accelerate national and cross-border OOP scenarios and thus directly benefit the citizens via mobile government services, as the penetration rate of mobile subscribers within the European population is at around 86%, with significant growth rates in the eastern MS. Combined with the increasing need for mobility concerning employment and education, safe, resilient, and sustainable mobile communication is key to tapping into this potential. Hence, in this track, we want to highlight strengths and weaknesses related to the digital transformation and, more specifically, the transition not only into eGovernment but also mGovernment, including facets of the OOP, electronic identification (eID), and SDGR. A particular focus will be set on technical and legal aspects, as well as on governance issues.
 
TRACK 16: Digital Government and Sustainable Development Goals

Track chairs: Rony Medaglia (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark), Gianluca Misuraca (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) are shaping the global agenda in multiple areas, including public opinion, policy, and research. The 17 SDGs, detailed in 169 targets, have an ambition of linking separate goals of sustainable development across different areas, into a unitary vision. The main consequence of this new vision has been to move the focus beyond the individual instances of e.g., environmental impacts of human activities, or economic inequalities, and to link them in a coherent system within the framework of the Agenda for the Sustainable Development 2030. Digital government can act as enabler to sustainability, equity and social inclusion and it represents a cross-cutting objective across several SDGs at both sectoral and horizontal level, with a crucial importance in particular for the goal 16 that aims to ´Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels´. This track invites contributions focusing on the potential benefits and challenges of digital government in supporting the achievement of SDGs and the role of digital technologies to sustain policy developments at both horizontal and sectoral level, including in particular the impact on democratic innovation and institutional reforms of governance systems.
 
TRACK 17: Digital Government, Solidarity and Social Cohesion

Track chairs: David Duenas-Cid (Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland), Elsa Estevez (Universidad Nacional del Sur and National Research Council for  Scientific and Technological Research, CONICET, Argentina), Tomasz Janowski (Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland and Danube University Krems, Austria)

Solidarity is a unity of feeling among people sharing a common objective or interest, despite their logical differences and inequalities. A key measure for building social cohesion, particularly in deeply divided societies, it embodies human rights, active citizenship, inclusion, and empathy. Government has a profound impact on solidarity and social cohesion. Still, this impact can be double-edged: government policy can help increase social solidarity and social cohesion, but too much reliance on the government to solve society’s problems and organize citizens’ lives can lead to a breakdown of social cohesion. Digitizing government adds new layers of complexity to this relation: it can scale up the positive impact of government on solidarity, but it can also amplify polarization and, hence, negatively affect government efficacy. On the other hand, solidarity can enhance digital government by triggering technological innovation, e.g., creating tools for vulnerable citizens during a crisis, or becoming the goal for such innovation, e.g., fostering the more equitable distribution of resources. Thus the relationship between digital government and solidarity is rich and intense. This track aims to unravel some of the open questions regarding this topic. Key among them is how digital government can enhance solidarity and social cohesion and, conversely, how solidarity and social cohesion can enhance the efficacy of the government’s digital agenda and the efficacy of digital government itself.

TRACK 18: Digital Government Student Track 

Track Chairs: Bettina Distel (University of Muenster, Germany), Hendrik Scholta  (University of Muenster, Germany), Karen Mossberger (Arizona State University, USA), Marzia Mortati (Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy)
 
This track addresses Bachelor and Master students and encourages them to submit and present their work at the conference. With this format, we aim to provide students with a first-hand experience of how research works and deepen their interest in academia. We want to attract the original work of students, facilitate a constructive and developmental double-blind peer-review process, and subsequent publication of their works. In contrast to the general research tracks, students will be the first authors of the papers in this track and present their work at the conference. We encourage supervisors to act as co-authors to ensure a scientifically guided paper development process. All topics in the area of digital government are welcome. For exemplary topics, please take a look at the topics listed in the other tracks. We are open to all conceptual and empirical papers that use all kinds of research methods. The participation in the student track will be possible online and offline. This track gives Bachelor and Master students the opportunity to actively contribute to the digital government community.

WORKSHOPS AND TUTORIALS

Workshops are half-day or full-day facilitated discussions. Short presentations by workshop participants typically stimulate discussions. Individuals proposing workshops will be responsible for identifying and selecting participants for the workshop and conducting workshop activities. Tutorials are half-day or full-day presentations or hands-on experiences offering deeper insight into the scientific or government domains, research topics or methods, technologies, or field experiences of veteran digital government researchers and practitioners.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

Panel discussion proposals may address themes or topics related to any of the tracks for the conference. Additionally, we welcome panel proposals that spotlight 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 program co-chairs about their ideas before developing their submissions.

POSTERS AND SYSTEM 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 and highly interactive forum in which Ph.D. students meet and discuss their work with each other and with senior faculty from a variety of disciplines associated with digital government research. We welcome applicants from a broad range of research areas relevant to digital government.

SUBMISSION TYPES AND REQUIREMENTS

- Research papers – blind review

Such submissions present innovative digital government research results in the form of formal scholarly papers. Papers on any digital government topic and using any research methodology are welcome. Relevance to digital government problems, goals, or policies must be explicit. (Limit of approximately 8,000 words)

- Management or policy papers – blind review

Such submissions describe and evaluate practical digital government projects or initiatives, discuss major policy themes, or present and evaluate management approaches to digital government initiatives and programs. (Limit of approximately 5,000 words)

- Poster summaries

Poster summaries should outline the nature of the research, policy, or project and describe why the work will be of interest to dg.o attendees. Posters prepared for the conference should measure 36" x 48". Each poster station will be provided with a table and an easel. Selected poster submissions may be asked to give an oral presentation in the conference sessions. (Limit of approximately 1,300 words)

- System demonstration summaries

System demonstrations are held concurrently with the poster session to accompany good food and professional fellowship. The 1-2 page summaries should outline the nature of the system and describe why the demonstration is likely to be of interest to dg.o attendees. Demonstrations of interest include systems under development or in active use in research or practice domains. Submissions should include authors' names and contact information according to that format. Each station has a table, an easel, and Internet access. Monitors will be available for rent. Selected demo submissions may be asked to give an oral presentation in the conference sessions. (Limit of approximately 1,300 words)

- Panel descriptions

Panel proposals should include information about the theme and goals of the panel, a summary of the digital government issues or questions that the panel will address, statements about the value of the discussion to conference attendees, and how well-suited the topic is to a panel discussion. In addition, the proposal should include information about the expertise of the moderator and panelists in the selected issues. Please include names, institutional affiliations, addresses, email, and phone numbers of the contact person, moderator, and presenter(s). (Limit of approximately 1,300 words)

- Tutorial proposals

Tutorials are half-day or full-day presentations offering deeper insight into digital government research, practice, methodologies, technologies, or field experience. In particular, tutorials provide insights into good practices, research strategies, uses of specific technologies such as social media, and other insights into digital government that would benefit researchers and practitioners. (Limit of approximately 1,300 words)

- Workshop proposals

We invite workshop proposals on any e-government research or management topic. Workshops are half-day or full-day events intended to offer interactive sessions in which the workshop host and participants discuss and engage in activities designed to facilitate joint learning and further exploration of a particular subject. Individuals proposing workshops will be responsible for identifying and selecting participants for the workshop and conducting workshop activities. (Limit of approximately 1,300 words)

- Doctoral colloquium applications

The doctoral colloquium is a highly interactive full-day forum in which Ph.D. students meet and discuss their work with each other and with senior faculty from a variety of disciplines associated with digital government research. Ph.D. students can submit papers describing their planned or in-progress doctoral dissertation covering any 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 preliminary findings but have yet to reach the stage of defending their dissertations. We expect students at this study stage to gain the most value from feedback on their work and the more general discussions of doctoral programs and scholarly careers. See the detailed announcement for complete information on the colloquium and how to apply. The material provided in applications to the doctoral colloquium will not be published in the proceedings. However, we encourage students to submit finished research to one of the paper tracks or as a poster or demo. (Limit of approximately ten pages, not including references, tables, and figures)

Submission Site: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=dgo2023  

Submissions need to follow the dg.o conference guidelines. Detailed instructions and the ACM conference proceedings template will be available on the conference website http://dgsociety.org/dgo-2023/ under "submission guidelines".

Research, management, and policy papers will be reviewed through a double-blind process. Therefore, authors must omit their names and contact information from all submissions. Authors must identify the topic(s) being addressed in the paper to assist the program committee in the review process. All other submissions should use the ACM proceedings template but include author names. 

At least one author is expected to attend the conference to present the work. All accepted submissions require at least one author to be registered for the conference for it to be included in the conference proceedings. The authors of more than two papers can register for and present at most two co-authored papers. Some other co-author registration and presentation are required from the third paper onwards.

PUBLICATIONS

All accepted research, management, or policy papers and panel, poster, and system demonstration descriptions will be published in the conference proceedings by ACM Press and included in the ACM digital library and the DBLP bibliography system. Workshop and tutorial descriptions can also be published in the conference proceedings, depending on the authors, and decided by the program chairs. 

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit significantly extended versions to the special issues of various journals. Several special issues are considered in relation to the conference, including with:

- Government Information Quarterly
- Digital Government: Research and Practice
- Transforming Government: People, Process, Policy
- International Journal of E-Government Research
- Information Polity
- International Journal of E-Planning Research
- International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age

BEST PAPER AWARDS

Outstanding achievement awards will be presented in four categories: research category, management and policy category, poster category, and system demonstration category. Papers that reflect the conference's main theme, "Together in the unstable world: Digital government and solidarity", will be given preference. Other selection criteria include the interdisciplinary and innovative nature of the work, its contribution to and balance between theory (rigor) and practice (relevance), the importance and reach of the topic, and the quality of writing and communicating the work to a broad audience.

CONFERENCE COMMITTEES

CONFERENCE CHAIRS

- Tomasz Janowski, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland
- Marijn Janssen, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands 
- Helen K. Liu, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

PROGRAM CHAIRS

- Loni Hagen, University of South-Florida, USA
- Hsin-chung Liao, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
- Nadzeya Sabatini, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland
 
POSTER AND DEMO CHAIRS

- Catherine L. Dumas, Simmons University, USA
- David Valle-Cruz, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México
- Nina Rizun, Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland

DOCTORAL COLLOQUIUM CHAIRS

- J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, University at Albany, SUNY, USA
- Ida Lindgren, Linköping University, Sweden
- Gabriela Viale Pereira, Danube University Krems, Austria

FINANCE CHAIR

- Mila Gasco, University at Albany, SUNY, USA

ORGANISATION COMMITTEE

- Magdalena Ciesielska, finances 
- Jakub Chabik, outreach 
- David Duenas Cid, promotion 
- Jaromir Durkiewicz, proceedings and technology
- Igor Garnik, venue and services
- Karolina Krause-Brykalska, cultural program
- Grażyna Musiatowicz-Podbiał, hospitality
- Sławomir Ostrowski, registration and volunteers

All from the Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland.