DGOnline Newsletter

Volume 30: November 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:

• EGOV 2010
• Conferences and Calls for Papers
• Grant Opportunities and Announcements

EGOV 2010

The IFIP e-government conference (EGOV 2010) will take place in Lausanne, Switzerland (photo below) on August 29 - September 2, 2010.

The conference brings together leading researchers and professionals from across the globe and from a number of disciplines. Over the years, the interest in this domain of study has steadily increased. The 2009 EGOV conference - within the DEXA conference cluster - has attracted more than 130 participants from 32 countries including developing countries, with 35 contributions in completed research, 25 contributions in ongoing research, 7 projects contributions and 3 workshops. eGovernment research has demonstrated its relevance to practice and consequently has influenced and even shaped government strategies and implementations. Conversely, eGovernment practice has inspired eGovernment research. A wide range of topics has received scholarly attention. In recent years, the assessment and evaluation of eGovernment projects, the foundations of eGovernment as a research discipline, integration and interoperation in government, and the role of information and communication technology for development rank among leading topics on the research agenda. More information is available at

http://www.egov-conference.org/egov-2010

Conferences and Calls for Papers

Call for Papers: Internet and Voting

A conference on the topic of “Internet and Voting” will be held on June 3-4, 2010, at the European University Institute’s EUDO (European Union Democracy Observatory), in the Tuscan hills overlooking Florence. The conference will fund travel and accommodation costs for five paper givers, to be selected on the basis of submitted abstracts. Additional papers may be accepted subject to self-funding. The conference organisers invite original papers offering new theoretical and/or empirical insights into the linkage between voting and internet based information and communication technologies. Abstracts should be sent by December 18 2009. This conference is jointly sponsored by the European Union Democracy Observatory (EUDO) and the Centre for the Study of Democracy, UC Irvine. Please submit abstracts to Alexander.Trechsel@eui.eu

Call for Papers: dg.o 2010

The 11th International Digital Government Research Conference (dg.o 2010) will take place on May 17-20, 2009 in Puebla Mexico. The dg.o meetings are an established forum for the presentation, discussion and demonstration of interdisciplinary digital government research, technology innovation, and applications. Each year the conference combines: presentations of effective partnerships among government professionals, university researchers, relevant businesses, and NGOs, as well as grassroots citizen groups, to advance the practice of digital government and research on digital government as an interdisciplinary domain that lies at the intersections of computing research, social and behavioral science research, and the problems and missions of government.

The dg.o 2010 conference theme "Public Administration Online: Opportunities and Challenges" focuses on open government, information sharing, interoperability, distributed collaboration, and massive intelligence in government areas, as well as Web 2.0, and cloud computing. The theme encompasses issues related to the capabilities to be provided by such environments; user interactions and experiences with such online Digital Government resources and environments; and, the technical infrastructure needed to support such environments. Topics in Web 2.0 technologies, online collaboration environments, user adoption and adaptation, and use of cloud computing to support such environments are all relevant and pose interesting scientific questions. At the same time, governments around the world are being confronted with incredible challenges in privacy and policy issues, even as there are trends and pressures to make these data accessible via more platforms, e.g. mobile devices. An additional important focus area of the conference is on policy issues related to the above topics. More information is available at http://www.dgo2010.org

Politics of Open Source

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: Pre-ICIS Workshop on eGovernment Research
This one day workshop is sponsored by AIS SIG eGovernment and will take place prior to International Conference on Information Systems (More information on the conference is available at http://www.icis09.org ). Submissions are invited for presentation and discussion at the 2009 SIG eGovernment Workshop to be held from 8.30 am -5 pm on Tuesday, December  15, 2009, Marriott Desert Ridge Hotel, Phoenix. More information about the workshop is available at http://sigegov.org

Call for Papers: APSA

Scholars are invited to submit papers for for the American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting on September 2-5, 2010 in Washington DC. Proposal Submission Deadline is December 15, 2009. Digital government scholars are invited to submit their proposals to the Information Technology and Politics section of APSA. Their call for proposals is available at http://www.apsanet.org/content_57133.cfm   More information on general call for proposals is available at http://www.apsanet.org/content_4827.cfm

Call for Papers: The 8th annual Eastern European eGov Days
The days will be held on 21-23 April 2010 in Prague, Czech Republic and titled "Changing Concepts & eGovernment as a Service. The event is jointly organised by: Forum e|Government / OCG-Austrian Computer Society, Vienna (AT) and EPMA/Vysocina Region (CZ) with partners. The annual Eastern European e|Gov Days has become a recognised platform for dialogue and knowledge transfer between Western and Eastern European countries. This event brings together over  200 professionals from the private and public sector in a lively exchange of experience and ideas and real life examples. More information is available at http://www.epma.cz/eeegov-days.html>http://www.epma.cz/eeegov-days.html

Call for Papers: Regulatory Governance

The ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance is planning to hold its third biennial conference on "Regulation in the Age of Crises" at  University College Dublin, Ireland, from 17-19 June 2010. The local  organization of the conference will be coordinated by Colin Scott,  Professor of EU Regulation and Governance at UCD. The call for papers and panels and more information are on our website: http://regulation.upf.edu

Call for Papers: Regulation & Governance

This relatively new journal is about to enter its fourth year with a high reputation, high impact factor,  high turn out of submissions (47 days on average between submission and decision) and no backlogs of papers. See more at the Journal's website: http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1748-5983

Call for Papers: Networking Democracy? New media innovations in participatory politics

A three day Symposium to be held at Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania, on 25-27 June 2010. Democratic politics worldwide are increasingly being conducted and re-configured through the domain of digital communications networks. The socio-technical developments, such as Web 2.0, facilitating these  media-saturated public spheres are in little doubt. What is highly  contested however is the interpretation of what these profound changes offer for democratic governance in the twenty-first century. At its heart is the recognition that these new media networks are themselves the crucial site for a historical confrontation between opposing political and/or business interests and discourses intent upon forging  new forms of social relations. The deadline for paper proposals is on December 7. More information is available at http://www.brisc.info/NetDem/index.php?page=networking-democracy

Call for Papers: special issue Scope, Objective, and Achievement of E-government:
E-government to   E-governance

It is our pleasure to seek article proposals for a special issue of International Journal of Electronic Government Research (IJEGR) whose focus is on "Scope, Objective, and Achievement of E-government: E-government to   E-governance". IJEGR is a peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary international journal that publishes high-quality, original research about electronic government. Electronic government is broadly defined within topics such as but not limited to the hardware and software technology, e-government adoption and diffusion, e-government policy, e-government planning and management, e-government applications and e-government impacts. The journal also serves as a forum for scholars and practitionersto present theoretical and philosophical discussions on current issues relating to the practice of electronicgovernment. Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this onor before January 1,2010. All submissions must be original and may not be under review by another publication. Morei nformation is available at http://www.igi-global.com/development/author_info/guidelinessubmission.pdf. 

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

Call for Papers: CCCT 20010

The 8th International Conference on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies: CCCT 2010 will take place on April 6 -9, 2010, in Orlando, Florida, USA. Deadlines are the following: Papers/Abstracts Submissions and Invited Sessions Proposals: September 30th, 2009, Authors Notifications: November 16th, 2009, Camera-ready, full papers: December 16th, 2009 More information is available at

http://www.2010iiisconferences.org/CCCT

Call for Papers: RMCI 2010

The 7th International Symposium on Risk Management and Cyber-Informatics: RMCI 2010 will take place on June 29-July 2, 2010 in Orlando, Florida, USA. The deadlines are the following: October 14th, 2009: Submission of draft papers (2000-5000), extended abstracts (400-2000) and abstracts for interdisciplinary communication (200-600 words), November 30th, 2009: Notifications of acceptance February 10th, 2010: Submission of camera-ready or final versions of the accepted papers. More information is available at http://www.2010iiisconferences.org/RMCI

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

2010 iGov Research Institute  
The Center for Technology in Government at the University at Albany is pleased to announce the 2010 iGov Research Institute held in the Netherlands, from July 18-25, 2010.  Supported by the US National Science Foundation, the Institute was created for doctoral students from around the world who are interested in the impacts of information and communication technologies on government and governance. The iGov Institute includes both academic sessions and practical field work and is organized around the experiences of a city or region using advanced information policies and technologies for economic, cultural, and social benefits. The faculty team comprises internationally known researchers as well as senior government officials. This year our field venue is The Hague in the Netherlands.  Our local university partner and residential location is TU Delft. For more details about the program design, please read summaries http://www.ctg.albany.edu/institute?sub=past  of programs from previous years. The 2010 iGov application submission deadline is March 15, 2010. To learn more and to apply, please visit the institute website http://www.ctg.albany.edu/institute .

DGSNA Board Election for 2010-2011
The DGSNA Board is elected for a two-year period.  The election for the new board, which will take office on January 1 next year, is underway.  All DGSNA members in good standing should have received an email with a personal PIN which allows them to vote.  Voting closes on December 15. The Nominating Committee selected the candidates listed below for the open positions on the Board.  No additional nominees were received from the membership.
Candidates:
President-elect:
   John Bertot, University of Maryland (currently member of the Board)
Treasurer:
   Yigal Arens, USC/ISI (current incumbent)
Secretary:
   Andrea Kavanaugh, Virginia Tech (current incumbent)
Board members:
   Ramon Gil-Garcia, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico (current incumbent)
   Norman Jacknis, Director, Cisco's IBSG Public Sector Group
   Luis Luna-Reyes, Universidad de las Americas-Puebla, Mexico
   Theresa Pardo, Center for Technology in Government at the University of Albany (current incumbent)
   Andrew Philpot, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute
   Rejean Roy, Cefrio, Quebec
   Norm Sondheimer, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
   Christine Williams, Bentley College
The DGSNA Nominating Committee
   Eduard Hovy (current President)
   Sharon Dawes current Past President)
   Jochen Scholl (current Vice President)

Please contact Eduard Hovy at  hovy@isi.edu  with any questions.

The e-Government EndNote Reference Library has been updated to Rev 5.0 
The Digital Government Society makes available to members and non-members version 5.0 (May 2009) of the E-Government Master Library in EndNote TM (Version X2) XML format or a Package Version in ZIPformat. The library currently contains 3,090 references of predominantly English language, peer reviewed work. The library has been cleaned, and some 300 references were removed, since they did not meet the inclusion criteria or were undetected duplicates. The library now contains 3,090 entries, a net increase of 21.79 % over version 3.2 (July 2008). We continued detecting older work, which has been added. Also, 345 entries (11.16 %) published in 2008 were included. In order to download the library,please register yourself and accept the GPL license agreement. We provide the reference in EndNote XML or as a zippedPackage Lib, so that they can be imported by various EndNote versions. For the XML v ersion, please use the EndNote IMPORT function (select EndNote XML document). Click here to access the EndNote Library

Free Public Comment Analysis Toolkit Launched at UMass Amherst
Researchers in the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Pittsburgh have launched a free, Web-based beta version of the Public Comment Analysis Toolkit (PCAT) to assist government agencies in searching, analyzing, and responding to citizen comments submitted through federal regulatory sites like www.regulations.gov. The software research and development was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. To test PCAT, visit http://pcat-test.qdap.net.

ParticipateDB

ParticipateDB is a nifty little directory of online tools for public participation. The site went live on

September 15, 2009 and is currently in closed alpha. Take a sneak peek at our initial round of 25 tools

and 10 projects. The website is http://participatedb.com/

ICANN Studienkreis meeting in Barcelona

The 10th meeting of the ICANN Studienkreis will take place on January 21-22, 2010, at the Rivoli Rambla Hotel in Barcelona, Spain. The final programme will be published on the ICANN Studienkreis Website early November (http://www.icann-studienkreis.net) when we open also the website for registration. You will find also a link to the hotel for your reservation and links to some other hotels in the neighborhood of the Rivoli Rambla Hotel.  

Call for Proposals for Transparency and Democracy Websites

mySociety has teamed up with the Open Society Institute http://www.soros.org/ (OSI) to help people in Central and Eastern Europe build transparency and democracy websites suited to the needs and realitiesof their countries. In the UK mySociety runs a variety of sites such as http://www.theyworkforyou.com and our Freedom of Information website http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/. As a result of running these, we know that there are lots of people outside the UK longing to build similar sites that help increase transparency and accountability in their own government institutions. We have now launched a Call for Proposals for participants in Central and Eastern Europe, similar to the one we recently ran in the UK cee.mysociety.org . 

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

Disclosure of White House Visitor Access Records Online

In September President Barack Obama took another important step toward a more open  and transparent government by announcing a historic new policy to  voluntarily disclose White House visitor access records.  Each  month, records of visitors from the previous 90-120 days will be  made available online. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Opening-up-the-peoples-house

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).

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

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

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