Officers and Board Members

Eduard Hovy
President

Dr. Eduard Hovy is a Deputy Division Director at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI) in Los Angeles.  He is also a research faculty member of USC’s Computer Science Department and an Advisory Professor at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.  Dr. Hovy is director of ISI’s natural Language Group, one of the largest university-based research groups in human language technology in the world, and director of the Center for Knowledge Integration and Discovery at USC.  He has written and (co-)edited 5 books and over 170 technical articles on a variety of topics. 

Dr. Hovy has actively participated in the establishment and growth of research in Digital Government in the USA since the inception of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Digital Government research program in 1999.  Dr. Hovy was a founding member of the NSF’s Digital Government Conference series dg.o (see http://www.dgrc.org/conferences/).  He served as program chair in 2001 and 2002 and as co-conference chair in 2003 and 2004.  Over the past 6 years, Dr. Hovy has participated in several of the NSF’s Digital Government research initiation workshops, which bring together parties from various areas to investigate the potential for a new research program.  Typically, such workshops include researchers in IT, Social Science, and Political Science, staff from relevant government offices and agencies, and possibly representatives from interested public groups and organizations.  Dr. Hovy helped write the final reports for several of these workshops.  Finally, in 2005-06, Dr. Hovy served as chair of the committee to create the North American Digital Government society. 

Jochen Scholl
President-elect

Jochen Scholl is an assistant professor in the University of Washington’s Information School. He teaches and conducts research on information management, process change, and organizational transformation in government and other organizations. He employs both quantitative computer simulation techniques and qualitative research designs. Jochen has studied the strategies, motives, and focal areas of business and process change in digital government projects as well as the current practices employed in such projects. His special interests include integration, interoperability, organizational transformation, and the strategic choices in mobile technology diffusion in digital government.

Yigal Arens
Treasurer

Dr. Yigal Arens is Director of the Intelligent Systems Division of the University of Southern California's Information Science Institute, located in Marina del Rey, California, USA; Director of DGRC, the USC/Columbia University Digital Government Research Center; and Research Professor at USC’s Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. Dr. Arens received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. His primary research interests have been digital government, and information integration. 

In 1983 he joined the faculty of the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California.  In 1987 he joined USC's Information Sciences Institute (USC/ISI) where for almost ten years he headed the SIMS (Single Interface to Multiple Sources) research group, specializing in integration of heterogeneous databases and other information sources. Dr. Arens has been Director of the Intelligent Systems Division, one of the largest Artificial Intelligence research labs in the US, since 1999. Since 2005 he has been Director of DGRC, which he was Co-Director of since its creation in 1999. In 2002, Dr. Arens joined the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering as a Research Professor.

Andrea Kavanaugh

Secretary

A Fulbright scholar and Cunningham Fellow, Dr. Kavanaugh is Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. She is also the Associate Director of the university-wide interdisciplinary research Center for Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Her research lies in the areas of social computing, communication behavior and effects, and development communication. Prior to joining the HCI Center in 2002, she served as Director of Research for the community computer network known as the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) from its inception in 1993. She holds an MA in Communication from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in Planning (with a focus on telecommunications) from Virginia Tech.

Andrea currently serves on the board of the International Telecommunications Society (ITS), an interdisciplinary association of professionals in academia, the telecommunications industry and government. She is the author, co-author or editor of three books, 15 refereed journal articles, 14 refereed or invited book chapters; 18 other articles, reviews or technical reports, 18 refereed presentations at professional meetings; and over 40 invited professional presentations or talks. Her research is published by MIT Press, Springer, Greenwood, Kluwer, and Artech House and in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Interacting with Computers, American Behavioral Scientist, and The Information Society. Her work has also appeared in Proceedings of the Digital Government Conferences (2005, 2006) and of the Proceedings of the Communities and Technologies Conferences (2003, 2005, 2007).

Sharon Dawes
Past President

Sharon Dawes is Senior Fellow at the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) and Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy and Informatics at the University at Albany, State University of New York.  As the founding Director of CTG, from 1993-2007, she led the Center to international prominence in the field of digital government research.  Her research interests are cross-boundary information sharing and collaboration, international digital government research, and government information strategy and management.  Her research has been supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), US Department of Justice, Library of Congress, and State of New York. Also an experienced public manager, Sharon spent twelve years working in New York State government, with leadership responsibility for the state’s multi-billion dollar public assistance programs.  

A fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Sharon was elected the first President of the Digital Government Society of North America in 2006.  She serves on advisory committees for NSF, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST). She holds a Ph.D. in Public Administration from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy University at Albany/SUNY.

John Bertot

Board Member

John Carlo Bertot is Professor in the College of Information at Florida State University. He also serves as associate director of the Information Use Management and Policy Institute in the School. Bertot teaches and conducts research in the areas of information and telecommunications policy, with an emphasis on the planning, development, and evaluation of e-government services. Bertot’s interests include the nexus of government technologies and policy issues such as access to and dissemination of government information, privacy, security, and participatory democracy. Bertot serves as editor of Government Information Quarterly, an international journal of policy, practice, and management, and co-editor of Library Quarterly, the longest running information science journal in the United States.

Judy Cushing

Board Member

Judy Cushing has been a Member of the Computer Science Faculty at The Evergreen State College, a public four-year interdisciplinary liberal arts college, since 1983. She served as dg.o program co-chair with Theresa Pardo for 2005 and 2006, and dg.o 2007 Conference Co-Chair.

Prior to entering academia, Judy worked as a software developer and technology project manager in both the public sector and government, including IBM, Texas Instruments, two small startups (one in France and one in Seattle), Universities (Bordeaux, Cornell), and the U.S. Public Health Service. She completed her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering at Oregon Graduate Institute in 1993, and holds a M.A. in philosophy from Brown University and a B.A. in philosophy and mathematics from The College of William and Mary. Judy’s research involves information technology to support scientific research, most recently ecologists (but in the past medicine, computational chemistry, molecular biology, and oceanography). One current project aims to make recent ecology research results more readily available to state agencies, as they make, justify, and document decisions involving resource management.

J. Ramon Gil-Garcia

Board Member

J. Ramon Gil-Garcia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration at Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (Center for Research and Teaching in Economics) in Mexico City and a Research Fellow at the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY). Currently, he is also a Faculty Affiliate at the National Center for Digital Government, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Ramon is the author or co-author of articles published in The International Public Management Journal, Government Information Quarterly, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, European Journal of Information Systems, Reforma y Democracia, Gestion y Politica Publica, Espiral: Estudios sobre Estado y Sociedad, Convergencia, and Ciencias de Gobierno, among others. His research interests include collaborative electronic government, inter-organizational information integration, adoption and implementation of emergent technologies, information technologies in the budgeting process, digital divide policies, and multi-method research approaches.

Valerie Gregg
Board Member

Valerie Gregg is an independent digital government consultant. She is Co-PI on a National Science Foundation funded 4-year award entitled "Building and Sustaining an International Digital Government Research Community of Practice".

Theresa Pardo

Board Member

Theresa A. Pardo is Deputy Director of the Center for Technology in Government at the University at Albany. She is also a faculty member in Public Administration and Policy and Informatics. Theresa has directed numerous applied research projects with government partners and written articles, research reports, book chapters and case studies focusing on IT innovation in government, cross-boundary information sharing and integration, trust and knowledge sharing, preservation of government digital records, and XML.

Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Library of Congress, among others. Theresa is co-chair of the North American Digital Government Working Group and serves on various editorial and advisory boards including Government Information Quarterly, the International Advisory Board for Mobile Technologies for the United Nations, the Financial Market Regulation Program at the University at Albany and the Expert Working Group for the EUReGov project. She was recently appointed as a senior adviser to the Informatization Research Institution, State Information Center, P.R. China. Theresa began working as part of the dg.o team in 2004 as program co-chair for dg.o 2005 held in Atlanta and for dg.o 2006 in San Diego. She served as conference co-chair for dg.o 2007. During the Society formation process she was a member of the constitution drafting committee and the first election committee. She is currently chair of the DGSNA sponsorship committee. Theresa is also serving as program co-chair for the International Conference on Electronic Governance (ICEGOV) and co-chairs the Emerging Topics Mini-Track for the Hawaiian International Conference on System Sciences. Theresa holds a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University at Albany.