DGOnline Newsletter

Volume 26: July 2009

Welcome to dgOnline, the electronic newsletter of the Digital Government Society of North America. dgOnline is a monthly summary of news and events of interest to the DG community.  To submit material for inclusion in future issues, please send email to Meelis Kitsing at newsletter@dgsociety.org .

In this Issue:

• The White House Open Government Team Welcomes Your Comments
• Conferences and Calls for Papers
• Grant Opportunities and Announcements

The White House Open Government Team Welcomes Your Comments

An unusually relevant and interesting public discussion is underway now.  It is part of the Federal Office of Science and Technology Policy's (OSTP) effort to gather information about including and using IT in government.

The White House Open Government team (Office of Public Engagement) has website available at  http://www.whitehouse.gov/open.

Existing discussion are going on
Transparency:
- Principles: How do we define transparency so that we can prioritize our policymaking? 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Principles/)
- Governance: How do we institutionalize transparency across all  government agencies? 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Transparency-Governance/)
- Open Government Operations 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Operations/) 
and
- Data, Data.gov and Metadata 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Data/)
- Report: 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Wrap-Up-of-the-Open-Government-Brainstorming-Transparency/ 

Participation:
- Creating More Opportunities for Citizen Participation in Government Decision making
- E-Democracy: New Tools and Technologies for Participation
- Web 2.0 Policy Framework
- Public Participation in Federal Rulemaking

Collaboration:
- Enhancing Online Citizen Participation Through Policy 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Enhancing-Online-Citizen-Participation-Through-Policy/)
- Achieving Better Results by Working Together 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Collaboration-Achieving-Better-Results-by-Working-Together/)
- Prizes as Incentives for Public-Private Partnerships 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Prices-as-Incentives-for-Public-Private-Partnerships/)
- Collaborative Problem Solving and Alternative Dispute Resolution

And the current discussion is soliciting thoughts on how Government can strike a balance between encouraging and allowing creative uses of new technologies, promoting public access, and ensuring that these technologies are implemented safely.

Access the Declassification Policy Forum at http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/ and the specific Technology  Challenges and Opportunities discussion at 

http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/07/09/technology-challenges-and-opportunities/ 

Just register (at the top right) and then you can login and make comments.  The easy-to-use MixedInk system (see the nice video at http://www.vimeo.com/2674991) helps you cut and paste from other 
people's comments to make your own personal recommendation.

Your comments are welcomed until July 19, 2009.

Do check it out!  And if you see an opportunity, please feel free to mention DSGNA!!

Conferences and Calls for Papers

Call for Papers: Politics of Open Source Conference

The conference will take place on May 6-7, 2010, in Amherst, Massachusetts and features Clay Johnson (Sunlight Labs) as one of the daily keynote speakers. Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) has made significant advances, both technically and organizationally, since its emergence in the mid-1980s. Over the last decade, it has moved from a software development approach involving mostly volunteers to a more complex ecology where firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies and volunteers may be involved. Moreover, the production paradigm continues to expand to other areas of digital content (e.g., Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Connexions, etc.). In this conference we use the phrase “open source” to capture this broader phenomenon. The Program Committee encourages disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of open source, broadly defined.

"Politics" in the conference title, can have many interpretations. Political issues closely tied to the free and open source software movement(s) include: national government policies related to the adoption of open source technologies or questions related to interoperability and open standards, software patents, vendor lock-in, and copyright. These are central themes we expect may be discussed in this forum. In this context, we welcome international submissions since differences in the political perspective appear in international contexts. However, topics related to how the concept of openness has led to various interpretations, adaptations, and applications of “open source” in other domains, and political issues that surround these broader innovations, are also welcome. More information is available at the conference website at http://www.umass.edu/jitp/

Call for Papers: Ronald Coase Institute Workshop on Institutional Analysis

The Institute will host a workshop on institutional analysis in Xiamen, China, on December 13-19, 2009. Deadline to apply is on August 7, 2009. The institute seeks outstanding young scholars who have not attended their previous workshops. More information is available at the following website:

http://www.coase.org/whatsnew.htm

Call for Papers for Special Issue of Electronic Government: An International Journal on E-Government: Past, Present, and Future
The objective of this special issue of Electronic Government journal is to provide an outlet for publishing original research highlighting current issues related to technical, organizational, managerial and socio economic aspects of e-Government adoption, evolution, implementation and impact. We seek to invite papers that address various aspects of e-Government projects from a theoretical, conceptual, or empirical perspective to set the stage for future research direction in e-Government. Both quantitative as well as qualitative studies on e-Government from developed and developing countries perspectives will be encouraged. To submit a paper, please email Dr. Vikas Jain at vjain@ut.edu.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) 
The journal is an official publication of the Information Resources Management Association and invites submissions to its special issue: on E-Democracy - Online Youth Participation and Engagement. Submission due date: August 15, 2009. The full call is  available at:
http://www.igi-global.com/journals/details.asp?ID=33407&v=callForPapersS

Call for Papers: Transforming Government

The journal publishes leading scholarly and practitioner research on the subject of transforming

government through its people, processes and policy. Unique and progressive in its approach,

the journal seeks to recognise both the multidisciplinary and the interdisciplinary perspectives

of e-Government, and encourages both pure and applied research that impacts central and local

Government, with international perspectives also welcome. It will also be interested in exploring

how research carried out in the private sector can be applied to the public sector as a means of

improving efficiency and effectiveness. Coverage is international and focused on original research

in e-Government ICT, service chain issues, public sector management, policy implications of

developing environments, and organizational and human resource issues. To submit an article,

please go to the journal homepage at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/tg.htm, or contact:

The Editor, Professor Zahir Irani, Brunel University, UK E-mail: Zahir.Irani@Brunel.ac.uk,

or the publisher, Kelly Pycroft, E-mail: kpycroft@emeraldinsight.com 

Call for Papers: International Journal of Electronic Governance

International Journal of Electronic Governance (IJEG) is an academic journal focusing on interdisciplinary issues of electronic governance and digital collaboration in the domains of administrative, political and social interaction world-wide. IJEG is published in english by Inderscience Publishers and all submitted manuscripts are subject to a double-blind review process. Full text of the IJEG inaugural and the second issues available from http://www.inderscience.com/ijeg

Information Polity: Call for Papers

Authors who wish to write articles for future editions of Information Polity are requested to submit their manuscripts electronically to the Editorial Assistant: Dr Alasdair Marshall, email: amar2@gcal.ac.uk. For more detailed instructions please refer to the Authors Corner on the IOS Press website: www.iospress.nl
 

Grant Opportunities and Announcements

Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics

PoliticsOnline and the World eDemocracy Forum proud to announce the list
for nominations of the Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics. For the tenth
year in a row, PoliticsOnline subscribers and visitors from around the world are invited to help select the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies having the greatest impact on the way the Internet is changing politics.

This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the 25 finalists. The integration of politics and the Internet are reflected in this year's diverse, international nominees.

The winners, those top 10 nominees who receive the most votes, will be invited as honored guests to the world eDemocracy Forum October 8-9, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, (Paris, France), where they'll take part in an awards ceremony and other special programs throughout the two-day forum.

Please review the 26 finalists below and then select one who has had the greatest influence on the world of ePolitics in 2009. The information is available at

http://www.politicsonline.com/content/main/specialreports/2009/top10_2009/vote.asp

NSF Programs

The programs can be a good fit with certain types of digital government research:
Innovation and Organizational Sciences  (IOS)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5378&org=SES&from=home

Law and Social Sciences

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5422&govDel=USNSF_39

Sociology

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5369&govDel=USNSF_39

Political Science

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5418&govDel=USNSF_39

Creative IT

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09572/nsf09572.htm?govDel=USNSF_25
Decision, Risk and Management Sciences  (DRMS)

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5423&org=SES&from=home 

Science, Technology and Society

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5324&govDel=USNSF_39

Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry  (GOALI)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13706

SBE Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13453&govDel=USNSF_50
The full list of Social and Economic Science programs at NSF can be
found at http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=SES

The NSF Regional Grants Conference will take place in Jackson, MS on October 5 and 6.

More information is available at http://www.nsf.gov/events/event_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114599&govDel=USNSF_13

APSA Short Course on Coding and Blog Analysis

American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada, will host a short course "Coding the Blogosphere: Introducing the Coding and Blog Analysis Toolkits" at 1-5 pm on September 2, 2009. The course is hosted by Dr. Stuart Shulman who is the founder of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP), which is a fee-for-service coding lab co-located at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. QDAP and QDAP-UMass staff and coders work on coding projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other U.S. funding agencies. He has been the Principal Investigator and Project Director on related National Science Foundation-funded research projects focusing on electronic rulemaking, human language technologies, manual annotation, digital citizenship, and service-learning efforts in the United States.

At the APSA 2009 Short Course, Dr. Shulman will lead a hands-on (your laptop) training introducing to the Coding Analysis Toolkit (CAT), a free, web-based service designed to facilitate the measurement and reporting the reliability and validity of work completed by multiple coders. He will also introduce the Blog Analysis Toolkit (BAT), which is also a free system designed to capture blog posts and archive them for analysis in CAT. For more information, please visit the following website :http://www.apsanet.org/media/Short%20Course%203.pdf

DGSNA Conferences in 2009-2010

The Board of DGSNA, the Digital Government Society of North America,  has decided that the dg.o 2009 conference, originally scheduled to be held in Puebla, Mexico, on May 18-20, will not be held this year, due to fears raised by the swine flu epidemic. Although there will be no physical meeting this year, the conference proceedings will be published, and will be noted as an official publication of the DG Society, so that papers can be formally referenced in citations.  Anyone already registered for the conference will receive the CD of the proceedings, and the proceedings will be published as usual in the ACM Digital Library. The local organizer team in Puebla has unanimously agreed to host dg.o 2010, our next conference, in Puebla next May.  It is a great city, and we still want to enjoy it! In addition, a smaller event will be held in Washington DC in November or December 2009, focusing on the interests of members of  the US government, and will include some events originally planned for the dg.o 2009 conference.  You will receive information about this event later in the year. 

EU Profiler

"EU Profiler" (www.euprofiler.eu) is arguably is the most advanced voting advice application (VAA) that has been ever built. It covers 30 countries, is in 24 languages and contains 9000 coded and documentedpositions of 300 political parties in Europe, in view of this year's EP elections. Over 130 doctoral students,post-docs and professors all around Europe have been working on this. The group conceptualizing the entire endeavour comprise renowned political scientists such as Peter Mair, Mark Franklin, Hanspeter Kriesi, Yves Mény, Stefano Bartolini, Sven Steinmo and Thomas Poguntke. The technological development was done in collaboration with two tech partners (the Dutch company "kieskompas" and the Swiss "Politools" at the University of Zurich). The EU Profiler went live in April 2009 and by mid-May 2009 had 920'000 visitors and 370'000 advices were given to the users. The media report on it all over Europe and we are expecting more users over the next weeks preceding the EP elections.

Massachusetts Government Report

The Massachusetts online government transparency report is now available online. The ability to see how government uses the public purse is fundamental to democracy.  Budget transparency checks corruption, bolsters public confidence in government, and promotes fiscal responsibility. Massachusetts has only barely begun to take full advantage of the benefits of online transparency for government expenditures. Transparency 2.0 is Comprehensive, One-Stop, One-Click Budget Accountability and Accessibility. Link to report can be found at: http://www.masspirg.org/tax-budget/budget-transparency

Guide for Evaluation of Online Engagement

Michelle Lyons at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills of the UK Government has developed a draft guide for officials to use when evaluating engagement activity. Ideally, this guide will complement existing evaluation frameworks for offline engagement initiatives. In the spirit of open collaboration she would like to invite you to contribute to the development of this guide. Scholars and experts can edit and comment on the content. The guide is available at http://interactive.dius.gov.uk/diuswiki/wiki/Evaluation_of_Online_Engagement

The EU Report on e-Government and e-Participation

European Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate General issued a report on e-Government and e-Participation on 10 December 2008. The EU is investing heavily in e-government to help boost growth while delivering on the benefits of the information society, including greater cross border collaboration, less fragmented research effort, and access to ICT anywhere, any time and by anyone. This report examines how ICT is revolutionising the way citizens, businesses and public administrations interact. The report is available at
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/egovernment/docs/pdf/policy-report_e-gov.pdf

Special offer: reduced subscription to Journal of Information Technology and Politics
The publisher Taylor & Francis is pleased to offer members of the Digital Government Society of North America a steeply reduced rate on subscriptions of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics (JITP), edited by Prof. Stuart Shulman.  Instead of $92/year, DGSNA  members can obtain hardcopy issues of the journal for only $50/yr. The JITP website is available at http://www.jitp.net/

Special Deal for DGSNA Members: Discount on Information Polity
IOS Press, the publishers of the highly regarded journal Information Polity, has reached an agreement with the DGSNA Board. Individual members can subscribe to the journal for a discounted rate of US$75 per year (print copy) and US$25 per year (online copy). Student members receive a discounted rate of US$15 per year (online copy).  The journal's website is http://www.iospress.nl/loadtop/load.php?isbn=15701255.

New E-Governance Book Series by IOS Press

IOS Press is specialized in advanced publications in the field of administrative sciences. Recently, the Press started a new series named Global E- Governance.  The publisher maintains longstanding collaborations with international organisations like IIAS and NATO and publishes a book series Innovation and the Public Sector, edited by Professor Victor Bekkers. In addition they publish 3 journals: Information Polity, edited by Prof. John Taylor, I-Ways, edited by Mr. Russel Pipe, and the International Journal of Regulation and Governance, published with TERI (New Delhi).

A New Version of the e-Gov EndNote library
The most recent version (3.2 - July 2008) of the popular master reference library of e-Government related literature (predominantly English-language, peer reviewed) is now available for downloading at http://tinyurl.com/ysglpg ( https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/jscholl/22768 ) The references come as a zipped EndNote XML document for easy import into EndNote library versions capable of importing those documents. The current version contains 2,537 references. We are asking authors to check their entries and report on errors or omissions.

SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF)
The Social Science Research Council, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is pleased to announce a call to faculty for interdisciplinary research field proposals for the 2009 Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) program.  Established in 2006, the DPDF combines financial support and workshop experience for early-stage graduate students engaged in predissertation research and developing their dissertation proposals. The DPDF program is designed to intervene at a critical moment in the career development of graduate students in the humanities and social sciences by aiding their transition from students to researchers. It provides complementary interdisciplinary perspectives to students across the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities. Faculty applicants must be tenured at different doctoral degree-granting programs at US universities and apply in teams of two. DPDF Research Directors lead groups of 12 graduate student fellows in two four-day workshops Research directors receive a stipend of $10,000 each. More information about the program may be found at: http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf

Ohio State Report on Building Democracy Through Online Consultation

A report entitled, "Building Democracy Through Online Citizen Consultation:  A Framework for Action," has emerged from an Ohio State University conference of the same name.  The document is intended as a brief practical guide to public officials who are wondering (a) what e-democracy is and (b) what sorts of issues need to be considered if an online consultation is to be staged successfully.  Helpful nuggets in the report include Alexandra Samuel's hints for keeping online discussions on track and a summary of a discussion she led of how to plan such an initiative, Lars Hasselblad Torres's ideas for attracting and sustaining participation, Jerry Kosicki's thoughts on achieving a representative sample of citizen opinion, and a review of the respective pluses and minuses of online versus face-to-face consultation (although doing one does not exclude doing the other!).  To get a copy of the report, go to http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/pldd/initiatives.php, and click the word "here" at the end of the paragraph entitled, "Building Democracy Through Online Citizen Consultation."

NSF Report on Cyberlearning

NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning has published its report titled "Fosterning Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge". The report is available at the following website: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08204/nsf08204.pdf?govDel=USNSF_124

Contact Meelis Kitsing at newsletter@dgsociety.org for questions or to submit material for future newsletters.

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