DGOnline Newsletter

Volume 33: February 2010

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:

• DGSNA President's Inaugural Message
• Conferences and Calls for Papers
• Grant Opportunities and Announcements

President's Inaugural Message to Current and Prospective DGSNA Members

Digital Government has never been more exciting and vibrant than now. Both technological advances and a changed style in political leadership in North America are making possible a new approach to open and transparent government, which re-invigorates the notion of a “government of the people, for the people, and by the people.” We also see a new approach to engaging and involving citizens and businesses in the business of government via participation and collaboration. Social media have begun playing a role in the interactions between citizens and government. At the same time, privacy, security, and the protection of critical infrastructures remain arduous challenges, to name just a few.

In 2010, the research and practice agenda in Digital Government has expanded, and exciting new research directions and practice challenges have emerged. It is up to us to seize the opportunity and make contributions to better understanding and implementation of Digital Government. Our first two presidents, Sharon Dawes of SUNY Albany and Eduard Hovy of USC, led the Digital Government Society of North America (DGSNA) through the phase of inception to this point, where the Society has firmly established itself with a stable body of membership and the good reputation of an association of high caliber experts in their respective fields. So, I wholeheartedly thank our past two presidents for their great achievements in the infant phase of this Society.

As the name indicates, DGSNA operates in North America. We conduct our Society’s business in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. We hold our annual international dg.o conferences on a rotational scheme in the three countries. This year the conference rotates to Puebla, Mexico. Our dg.o conference along with the HICSS e-Government Track, the IFIP EGOV conference, and the ICEGOV conference are the top international conferences in Digital or Electronic Government. The dg.o conference attracts scholars and practitioners not only from North America but also from around the globe.

Although we are based in North America, a unique feature of DGSNA is that membership is open to scholars and practitioners from anywhere in the world. We believe that members from outside North America contribute a great deal and also benefit from the value proposition and the network that our Society provides as well as from the experience we are gaining through our operations in North America. DGSNA is now entering a new phase on its path. This calendar year will be the last in which we enjoy funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF). I would like to extend special thanks to NSF and its now retired Digital Government Program officer Larry Brandt who was highly instrumental and effective in forming this research community and supplying it with financial resources and intellectual support in the early stage. From now on, we need to organize the Society’s business based on our own fund raising. DGSNA has formulated and is now further developing an external value proposition. The Society is not an internally focused organization of scholars and practitioners with a shared interest in Digital Government research. Rather, the Society is interested in propagating and sharing research and practice findings with government agencies and other interested parties, engaging in a vibrant exchange between practice and research for advancing excellence in Digital Government.

As an example, last month the DGSNA leadership and the members of an international working group met with officials from the US General Service Administration (GSA) in Washington, DC to discuss the impacts and challenges of social media in Digital Government. We also shared our research findings and practical recommendations in other areas with GSA, which proved to be of great value to decision-makers in the agency.

In its first meeting in January, the newly elected DGSNA board moved to implement this value proposition by defining three focus areas for calendar year 2010 activities:
(1) Increase Impact: DGSNA will expand its external contributions to academia and practice by conducting a number of external and public events, which address important topics in Digital Government research and practice and help connect research and practice even more strongly.
(2) Sponsorship Drive: DGSNA adds value to many stakeholders and constituencies inside and outside government. It also has a high potential for collaboration with other organizations and foundations interested in advancing democratic and open digital government. The Society will seek direct sponsorship, financial and in kind, from such organizations and institutions.
(3) Membership Drive: The more members the Society has, the better it can advance democratic and open digital government in North America and around the world. New members bring new ideas and experience and, vice versa, benefit from the rich pool of expertise already inside the Society.

Every DGSNA board member has personally signed up to contribute actively to one of the strategic focus areas during 2010. We intend to significantly increase the Society’s external impact, visibility, and reputation as an institution of dedicated and high-caliber experts. We will also strengthen the Society’s financial and membership bases.

This is a particularly good time to renew your membership or join the Society as a member. Become active as a member and join our strategic efforts targeted at increasing external impact, sponsorship, and membership of DGSNA. Please visit the DGSNA website http://www.dgsociety.org/membership.php , or contact Andrew Philpot  at philpot@isi.edu for enrollment and other information.

I wish all members of the Society and the wider DG community a very productive 2010.

Best wishes,

Hans J (Jochen) Scholl, PhD, MBA
Digital Government Society ofNorth America
President

Conferences and Calls for Papers

Internet, Politics and Policy 2010: An Impact Assesment

The conference is organized by the Oxford Internet Institute and will take place in Oxford, UK, on September 16-17, 2010. The Internet is now the most important international medium of communication and information exchange, involving citizens, firms, governments, political parties and NGOs, and bringing with it new practices, norms and structures. The societal shift enabled by the Internet is impacting upon public policy in all sectors, requiring rigorous empirical investigation, theoretical development and methodological innovation across academic disciplines. In short, the Internet drives social change, requiring a policy response - and policy organizations of all kinds use the Internet to formulate and implement that response. Analysis of these two trends requires taking advantage of the new evidence generated by the Internet and the development of methods from a range of disciplinary perspectives. The deadline for submission of 500-word abstract is March 15. More information is available at http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/?id=338

Global Internet Governance Workshop

Third International Workshop on Global Internet Governance: An Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction will take place in Montreal (QC), Canada on 30-31 May 2010. The workshop is Organized by GigaNet, in cooperation with The Canadian Communication Association and Media@McGill during the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS) 2010 Congress week in Montreal. The first day will be dedicated to outreach sessions aimed at increasing the interest in the Global Internet Governance field among both various academic disciplines and the civil society at large, including but not limited to NGOs and civil society groups active in related fields. These outreach sessions will include academic tutorials on Global Internet Governance as well as information and discussion led by experts in the field on current Global Internet Governance debates and their relevance to public policy making. The second day will feature thematic presentations selected upon submissions made in response to this call for contributions. We invite scholars to present and discuss their work-in-progress in Internet Governance-related research, with the aim to identify emerging research themes and design a research agenda. Rather than featuring academic paper presentations, the workshop aims at providing a survey of current academic activities in the field, in order to share ideas and forge possible collaborations.Submissions in view of thematic presentations should be sent by 20 March 2010 to Meryem Marzouki (Meryem.Marzouki@lip6.fr). They should be written in English and include the name, affiliation, e-mail address and short bio of author(s), along with no more than 500 words of research work description. The program committee will notify applicants by 20 April 2010.

Call for Papers: Workshop on “E-democracy and Political Communication”
International Political Science Association's Research Committee 10 on Electronic democracy and the Institute for New Media and EDemocracy in partnership with Electronic Democracy (DEL) research network (http://www.certop.fr/DEL) announce call for papers for the upcoming IPSA Workshop on „E-Democracy and Political Communication“ that will be held in Dubrovnik, Inter University Center, Croatia from 24 to 26 May 2010. The Workshop is a part of the annual Information Technology and Journalism conference organised by the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb and the Institute for New Media and E- Democracy. Paper proposals should list the author's name, address, university affiliations, telephone, fax, and email, followed by the paper's title and an abstract. All abstracts should be written in English and should not exceed 500 words. All paper proposals should be sent to ivona@edemokracija.hr  Submission deadline is 15 March 2010. All submissions will be reviewed by the Programme committee and acceptance notifications will be sent until 31 March 2010. Participants who are not contributors (i.e. who do not propose a paper) can apply through our web site www.edemocracyinstitute.eu

Call for Book Chapters
E-Governance and Civic Engagement: Factors and Determinants of E-Democracy is a book edited by Dr. Aroon Manoharan  and Dr. Marc Holzer. The proposed publication will focus on how governments across the world engage their citizens online and the resulting impact on citizens. The book will consist of chapters from academicians and practitioners on online civic engagement that specifically examine how e-governance facilitates – online public reporting by governments to their citizens, online citizen participation in decision-making and citizen satisfaction with e-governance. The book will focus on issues and challenges involving adoption and implementation of online civic engagement initiatives globally, and will help guide governments in their transformation to e-governance. Proposal Submission Deadline is on March 15, 2010. Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to: Dr. Aroon Manoharan at amanohar@kent.edu The book is to be published by IGI Global: http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=792

EGES conference at WCC 2010

The E-Government and E-Services (EGES) conference will take place on September 20-23, 2010  at Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, Australia is a cooperation of a number of groups that already have well-established activities in the field of e-government, e-governance, e-business, e-tcetera. Notably, IFIP working group 8.5 (Information Systems in Public Administration) and IFIP working group 6.11 (Communication Aspects of E-Business, E-services and E-society) and the CSI SIG on E-Governance (Computer Society of India Special Interest Group on E-Governance) have joined forces as the program co-chairs to make this stream of the IFIP World Computer Congress indeed outstanding and challenging. A “must attend” meeting opportunity for researchers, practitioners and policymakers where contributions from all three angles will lead to new perspectives and a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities that come with developing and implementing e-government services and applications.  For details see: http://www.wcc2010.com/eges

EGOV 2010

The IFIP e-government conference (EGOV 2010) will take place in Lausanne, Switzerland 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

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. The deadline for submissions is extended to March 1. More information is available at http://www.dgo2010.org

Call for Papers: HICSS-44 (2011) E-Government Track

E-Government Track at the 44th  Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-44) will be held from January 4-7, 2011 at he Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa, Koloa, Kauai, HI/USA. The HICSS e Government Track has an excellent reputation among e-Government scholars. Several times it has been ranked the academically most rigorous research conference on e-Government in the world. Having a paper accepted at the e-Gov Track at HICSS means something. For the fourth time in a row, HICSS will give the e-Government community the opportunity to conduct a full day symposium. The symposium is developing into a major community event at the very beginning of each calendar year. Here is where the community celebrates the best papers of the past year from around the world. Here the community presents and discusses new trends in its study domain. More information is available at http://faculty.washington.edu/jscholl/hicss44/Welcome.html

EGOVIS 2010

The conference will take place in Bilbao, Spain on August 30-September 3, 2010 and features invited talksby Trevor Bench-Capon, University of Liverpool, UK,  with tentative title: “We Can Work It Out: Argumentation techniques for e-particpation" and Roland Traunmüller, University of Linz, Austria, with title: “Web 2.0 Applications create a new Government”. The international conference EGOVIS represents a continuous sequel of the 8th International Conference EGOV in conjunction with DEXA, which focuses on information systems aspects of e-government. Information systems are a core enabler  for electronic government/governance with all its dimensions: e-administration, e-democracy, e-participation and e voting. For paper registration and electronic submission see http://confdriver.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/

EDem10

The 4th International Conference on eDemocracy (EDem10) will take place on May 6-7, 2010, at Danube University in Krems, Austria. Scientific eDemocracy visions and models have been developed since the 1960s, but it is now, during the first decade of the 21st Century, that they are becoming reality, being tested and implemented. Extensive IT provides the necessary basis, but it is not the developments in IT alone that are responsible for successful eDemocracy projects - it is due all those who use and apply them, as they adopt new behaviours and change old ones. The new, digital generation lives and breathes new values: they collaborate, compile content together, share their ideas, create networks on social platforms and organise themselves quickly and simply. The new values held, the new behaviours adopted, the changed mindset, along with improved usability and a still-increasing use of the internet, has led to a rapid and radical change in our society. We would like to invite individuals from academic, applied and practitioner backgrounds as well as public administration offices, public bodies, NGO/NPOs, education institutions and independent organisations to submit their research and project papers. More information is available at http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/edem

Politics of Open Source

The conference will take place on May 6-7, 2010, in Amherst, Massachusetts. The conference features Eric von Hippel is Professor and Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and Clay Johnson (Sunlight Labs) as 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/

WikiSym 2010

WikiSym, the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, will be held on July 7-9, 2010, in Gdansk, Poland. Starting this year, WikiSym aims to explicitly broaden its scope, exploring not only the thriving wiki community, but also other open movements and open collaboration initiatives. This includes related areas such as open online communities, collaborative creation of multimedia content (with or without wikis), and open journalism and publishing, just to list a few examples. Furthermore, our goal is to establish WikiSym as a venue for the exchange of information, experiences and practices among an interdisciplinary audience, including researchers, practitioners, industry representatives and experts with a wide variety of different backgrounds. More information is available at http://wikisym.org/ws2010

The 9th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2010)
The conference will take place on June 13-15, 2010,  in Athens, Greece. The Mobile Government Track at ICMB is seeking quality submission on the various aspects of mobile business in government. Mobilizing the Business of Government can be seen as a direct outgrowth of digitizing the business of government (also known as Digital Government, or e-Government). Under the new mobility paradigm and regardless of the sector (public or private), human actors expect to be able to satisfy their information and electronic transaction needs (combined data/voice) at any time and at any place. For the public sector this shift has numerous and challenging implications, but also holds promises of huge productivity gains and ubiquitous service availability in unprecedented ways. The Mobile Government Track is intended to showcase and discuss current practices, applications, opportunities, and unique challenges in mobile public-sector services, government field force automation, and mobile ICT-enabled disaster and emergency response management among other areas of mobile business in government. The track is also intended to pave the path towards a comprehensive research agenda on mobile government. More information is available at http://www.mbusiness2010.org

IJEP Special Issue on Power and Politics in the Design and Implementation of Information Systems

International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) is edited by Arik Ragowsky. Power and politics (defined as influence attempts) are prevalent in all aspects of system implementation. In fact, a significant body of literature exists examining how issues of power and politics affect the role CIO's play in organizations, impact the negotiations that take place during the process of system design, and influence aspects like pre-implementation decision making, training, maintenance and modification of systems. The objective of this special issue is to attract quality papers that focus on these topics. Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this special issue on Power and Politics in the Design and Implementation of Information Systems on or before June 1, 2010. More information is available at: www.igi-global.com/IJEand submission guidelines are available at:     

http://www.igi-global.com/development/author_info/guidelines submission.pdf.

Call for Papers: The Journal of E-Governance

The Journal of E-Governance has more than 20 years experience  providing readers with authentic reports on national and international developments and analysis of e-Governance strategies, applications, policies and regulation.  Recent articles featured Korea’s 20 Years of e-Government experience, Waseda e-Government Rankings 2010, Challenges to E-Government in Jordan and how Africa is Harnessing the Broadband Boom.  Articles focus on new trends as e-Transformation, Service Quality, Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, Citizen-Centric e-Government and Mobile Money.  It is published quarterly by IOS Press, Amsterdam http://www.iospress.nl/loadtop/load.php?isbn=18787673

Authors from diverse backgrounds have had their articles published on many subjects including: Building E-Government Through Reform, Public-Private-Partnerships Advance E-Government Services, Achieving Citizen-Centric E-Governance, Creating Global Cyber Security, and M-Government – Next Achievement in Public Service Delivery.  Papers of up to 25 pages including graphics and footnotes, in MSWord should be submitted to Editor-in-Chief, Russell Pipe, e-mail: grpipe@gmail.com  

JOEUC Special Issue Proposals on E-government
The research in the e-government area has exploded over the last decade or so. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing (JOEUC) invites special issue proposals from well-published scholars for a special issue on e-government.  We are especially interested in theoretically grounded empirical research that emphasizes citizens' interactions with e-government.  If you are interested, please send a proposal to the editor Adam Mahmood at mmahmood@utep.edu

Call for Papers: Public Knowledge 
Public Knowledge is an interdisciplinary student-run electronic journal hosted by the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech (ISSN 1948-3511).  As an electronic journal, Public Knowledge uses a variety of communication technologies to create a conversation about the questions and topics raised. Issues contain scholarly refereed articles as well as book reviews, essays, interviews and other works utilizing a variety of media. The next issue will be published in May 2010. Public Knowledge seeks articles, book reviews, essays, interviews and multimedia submissions for its next issue on the topicPublic Information in a Democracy. As scholars and citizens, we are constantly inundated with information that we must sort, evaluate, and perhaps use in our work and our daily lives. Public information comes to us from all areas of life - interactions with other people, television, radio, internet - and we must use our faculties to dig through the mass of information to help organize and synthesize all that we experience.  Furthermore, shifting definitions of the public and the private mean that formerly private information may now be considered public.  In this upcoming issue, we seek to explore this concept of (mass) public information. Deadline for refereed articles: February 12, 2010. All other, non-peer reviewed submissions (multimedia pieces, blogs, response essays, etc) are due March 31, 2010. You can also turn in response pieces throughout the life of the journal issue - up to 6 months.This schedule helps invigorate the conversation throughout the issue’s lifespan. For more information about publishing in Public Knowledge and to upload your submissions, please visit our website at www.pkjournal.org and follow through to the Submissions site. 

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: 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

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 .

Summer Institute on EITM at UC Berkeley
From June 14 to July 9, 2010, the University of California, Berkeley will host the summer institute on EITM: Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models. Funded by the National Science Foundation, this program trains graduate students and junior faculty in EITM, a research strategy that integrates theoretical models and empirical research to improve and expand our understanding of politics. The institute will integrate developments and findings from throughout political science, including the substantive areas of American politics, comparative politics, international relations, and political economy. Call for Participant Applications for EITM 2010 are available at http://gspp.berkeley.edu/EITM/

Tools for Text: Annotation Methods for Political Science Research
Text can provide valuable insights into many questions of interest to political scientists, from issueattention, to political ideology, to opinion formation, to networks or relations among actors.  To investigatesuch questions, reliable, valid and efficient approaches to classifying text are needed. The purpose of this 2 day workshop is to train newer faculty and advanced graduate students in the use of well-established text annotation methods. The workshop, sponsored by the National Science Foundation with additional support from the Center for American Politics and Public Policy, will be held June 14-15, 2010 at the University of Washington.  It will begin with presentations by notable experts in a range of textual analysis methods. However the primary focus of the conference is on training and application. Participants will leave with an appreciation of the strengths and limits of different methods, and hands on experience in applying and evaluating them.

Interested scholars should send a C.V. and brief description of how the workshop will benefit their research and teaching to John Wilkerson (jwilker@uw.edu) and Phil Schrodt (schrodt@psu.edu).  The deadline for applications is April 1, 2010 and applicants will be notified no later than May 1, 2010. Applications from newer faculty, advanced graduate students, and women and minorities are encouraged.  Participants will be reimbursed for their airfare. Accommodations and meals will be provided.

New ECPR Internet Politics Mailing List

The Internet and Politics Standing Group of the ECPR - European Consortium of Political Science Research - has started its Mailing List. Please feel free to subscribe the ML here: http://groups.google.com/group/ipoliticsecpr The ML aims to become a space where interested scholars may discuss and exchange information regarding research and activities related to the Internet and Politics Standing Group of the ECPR (debate, Call4Papers, Publications, Jobs).
ECPR Ipolitics group has also opened a Facebook group. Please consider to join the group at the following address:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Internet-and-Politics-Standing-Group-ECPR/311268288653

Context Miner

Chirag Shah, doctoral candidate in Information Science has invented and made available Context Miner: http://contextminer.com/index.php If you are interested in harvesting lot of data from blogs, flickr and youtube, this is the best tool many have seen yet. It is easy to use and the captured comments are increasingly interoperable with CAT & PCAT for coding. The filters for sampling the most viewed or most commented are really very powerful research tools. It also captures in-links from the web and other metadata.

The Roundtable on Communication and Information for Development

The roundtable on Future Imperatives of Communication and Information for Development and Social Change will take place in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday, May 25, 2010. It is hosted by SIGNIS, the World Catholic Association for Communication (Rue Royale 310, Brussels 1210, Belgium). This roundtable forms part of a series of preparatory and inter-connected roundtables, coordinated by ORBICOM-UNESCO Chairs in Communication, across the regions of the world to focus the attention of the most experienced and innovative information and communication scholars, practitioners and policy-makers on these new challenges towards world development and sustainability. These strategies and methods will be synthesized in a package comprising policy-intent papers, training kits and curricula, handbook, and journal articles. The package will define the structure of a cohesive and comprehensive international response to the emerging threats and challenges that the global community will soon have to address in a coherent and systematic fashion. More information is available at www.csschange.org

NSF Launches Open Government Web Page
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) recently launched a new Web site designed to encourage participation and collaboration between the agency and the citizens it serves. The Obama administration's Open Government Directive has led agencies across the government to establish Open Government Web pages to collect ideas and suggestions from the public. NSF's Open Government Web page will enable the public to submit ideas, comment, and vote for proposed ideas. NSF specifically wants input on access to large data sets and collaborations that aim to facilitate transformative research. NSF will publish an official Open Government Plan on April 7, which will incorporate the submitted ideas and will serve as a roadmap for its efforts to improve transparency. The website is available at http://www.nsf.gov/open/

Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford

Professors Joshua Cohen, Larry Diamond and Terry Winograd founded the Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford University in 2009. The purpose of the Program is to understand how (and to what extent) various information technologies and their applications -- including mobile phones, text messaging (SMS), the Internet, blogging, GPS, and other forms of digital technology -- are enabling citizens to advance freedom, development, social justice, and the rule of law.  The program lies at the intersection of social science, computer science, and engineering and thus focuses not only on conducting research but also on fostering the design of new technologies to achieve these ends.
This year, the Program has made the decision to expand its mailing list beyond members of the Stanford community.  While we post information on events in the bay area, we also share information such as news and jobs that may be of interest to the larger community. Please contact Yosem Companys at ycompanys@gmail.com for more information.

Open Government Directions Blog

AmericaSpeaks has just launched called Open Government Directions at http://www.opengovernmentdirections.org The blog will be a resource for those who care about theOpen Government Directive and creating a more participatory and collaborative government. Thus far it includes four kinds of resources:
1) Several thought pieces http://opengovernmentdirections.org/resources/ that we have written about best practices in open government, as well as links to resources that others have written. Specifically, we have written a few interesting pieces on key questions that agencies should ask before launching an online dialogue as well as recommendations for what agencies should include in their open government web sites. These will be regularly updated and added to.
2) Online dialogues about best practices in online engagement using Idea Scale http://opengovernmentdirections.ideascale.com/ and Mixed Ink http://opengovernmentdirections.org/mixed-ink/
3) A newsfeed http://opengovernmentdirections.org/ with links to new stories and articles about Open Government
4) And links to specific elements of the Open Government Directive http://opengovernmentdirections.org/open_gov/

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

Policy & Internet

The Policy Studies Organization (PSO), the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), and Berkeley Electronic Press are proud to announce Policy & Internet: the first major peer-reviewed journal investigating the implications of the Internet and associated technologies for public policy. The Internet is now the most important international medium of communication and information exchange, embedded in interactions between citizens, firms, governments and NGOs, and bringing with it new practices, norms and structures. The societal shift enabled by the Internet has major implications for public policy in all sectors, requiring rigorous empirical investigation, theoretical development and methodological innovation across academic disciplines. Policy & Internet is the first journal to fill a crucial gap in policy knowledge and research. It will be the premier venue for scholars and researchers to set the public policy agenda in the digital era. More information is available at http://www.psocommons.org/policyandinternet/

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/

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

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