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DGO 2025 “Sustainable Public and Open Data Ecosystems for inclusive and innovative government” track

Anastasija Nikiforova 1 Comment

26th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o2025) is coming with continuation of the track we launched the last time – “Sustainable Public and Open Data Ecosystems for inclusive and innovative government” track (chairs: Anastasija Nikiforova (University of Tartu, Estonia), Anthony Simonofski (Université de Namur ASBL, Belgium), Anneke Zuiderwijk (Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands) & Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar (University of Granada, Spain)).

Briefly about the track… Today, the goal of an actor-centric public data ecosystem that would be sufficiently sustainable, resilient and fair, is defined as an approach capable of representing and keeping in balance the data interests of all actors[1], to bring expected value (both economic, social and environment) became central for public data ecosystems and other types of data infrastructures and data spaces[2] that are based on the concept of openness and data sharing among stakeholders. Public data and open (government) data ecosystems are seen as a political and socio-economic phenomenon that promise to benefit the economy, and increase transparency, efficiency, and quality of public services, including the transformation of government data-driven actions, stimulate public sector innovations in various areas of public life and promote civic engagement[3][4][5]. Having collaborative governance models in place is one of the prerequisites for a resilient and value-adding ecosystem, of which stakeholders are an inevitable element, making it necessary to ensure those ecosystems are stakeholder-oriented. These models are expected to support stakeholders/actors, who, however, may have different characteristics (incl. (open) data literacy and digital literacy), needs / demands and expectations (public sector, private sector, business, citizen) for public value creation and co-creation. Understanding, designing, and maintaining such an ecosystem is further complicated by the fact that both data, service and process quality must be ensured and kept maintained with a limited understanding of how the above are expected to be ensured even alone.

Recent research found that concepts affecting and shaping the ecosystem are: 1) stakeholders / actors and their roles, 2) phases of the data lifecycle, in which a stakeholder participates in the ecosystem, 3) technical and technological infrastructure, 4) generic services and platforms, 5) human capacities and skills of both providers and consumers, 6) smart city domains (thematic categories) as the targeted areas for data reuse, 7) externalities affecting goals, policy, and resources, 8) level of (de)centralization of data sources – development, restrictions, 9) perception of importance and support from public officials, and 10) user interface, user experience, and usability[6]. Moreover, these ecosystems same as its components are (co-)evolving over time[7] due to both internal and external factors. The latter – external factors – include technological developments. As such, the rapid development of emerging technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as a new trigger for public and open data development (AI for open data and open data for AI), machine learning (ML), federated learning (FL), internet of things (IoT), metaverse etc. provides new opportunities to improve these ecosystems in a disrupt way to be useful for collaborative governance models. Also, the link between Open Data Ecosystems and sustainable development goals (SDG) seems to be more relevant nowadays in their way to build more democratic cities based on government transparency, citizen participation, and citizen cooperation. Finally, higher expectations, needs and demands of businesses and citizens, derived from the implementation of B2G, C2G models, that influence and shape the design and development of these data environments, as well as expected to be affected, e.g., B2G in relation to which European Commission is taking regulatory action and is preparing the Data Act to set the rules and conditions, thereby changing the current voluntary model to a more mandatory data sharing. Current research suggests that these topics are of great importance to governments, as well as businesses and citizens, whose efforts should complement each other in order to enable effective data reuse and value co-creation

As such, as public and open data ecosystems promise the transformation of government data-driven actions, the fostering of public sector innovations and the collaborative smartification of cities, society and life, triggering value-adding sustainable development goals-compliant smart living and Society 5.0. New research is needed to help public managers and politicians for (1) implementing emerging technologies and technological innovations, (2) improving the achievement of sustainable development goals for increasing transparency, participation, and cooperation, and (3) meeting the stakeholders’ expectations, needs, regulations and demands.

As such, this track welcomes contributions covering, but not limited to:

  • The concepts of theoretical approaches toward Public Data ecosystems, Open Data ecosystems, Data Spaces, and Data Marketplaces;
  • Infrastructures supporting Public and Open Data Ecosystems;
  • The role of emerging technologies in Public and Open Data ecosystems (incl. but not limited to AI, Generative AI, LLM, NLP, cloud computing, green computing, Metaverse  etc.);
  • Data architectures and data governance mechanisms;
  • Institutional aspects of implementing sustainable Public and Open Data Ecosystems;
  • Other sustainability dimensions of Public and Open Data Ecosystems;
  • Stakeholder-centric dimensions of Public and Open Data Ecosystems;
  • Human-Computer Interaction between users and systems (platforms);
  • Case studies of Public and Open Data Ecosystems, incl. but not limited to Local Government Level Data Ecosystems, e.g., Smart Cities Data Ecosystems;
  • The impact of Public and Open Data Ecosystems on Individuals, Organizations and Society.

The track welcomes both contributions covering the current state-of-the-art of public data ecosystems (what components constitute them, what are the relationships between these components, what makes an ecosystem resilient and sustainable), incl. individual case studies reflecting best or bad practices, as well as those addressing how these ecosystems can be transformed into more sustainable ecosystems that will “fuel” or “smartify” society (Information Society aka Society 4.0 to Super Smart Society aka Society 5.0 transition), cities and various areas of life.

The track is very aligned with the conference theme of DGO 2025, namely: Digital government fostering social cohesion for reducing inequalities. As mentioned in the theme description, “It focuses on strong social bonds in civic society, with responsive democracy and impartial law enforcement aiming at collaboratively addressing latent social conflicts. It involves building shared values in communities facing common challenges in an attempt to reduce disparities by increasing citizens’ feeling of belonging to a community and their engagement.” Public and open data ecosystems can be considered as environments that contribute to the above. Open data is aimed at reducing inequalities, open platforms constitute environments where data providers and data users find each other and collaborate and co-create to develop services and products useful for society, i.e., addressing their needs and tackling challenges society faces. While digital technologies enable the development of public and open data ecosystems, the adoption of such ecosystems has been fragmented. For instance, Van Loenen et al. (2021)[8] found that open data ecosystems “often do not balance open data supply and demand, exclude specific user groups and domains, are linear, and lack skill-training” (p. 2), which reduces their value-generation and sustainability.

Is your research related to any of the above topics? Then do not wait – submit!

🗓️🗓️🗓️Important Dates:

January 24, 2025: Papers, workshops, tutorials, and panels are due
March 26, 2025: Author notifications (papers, workshops, tutorials, panels)

[1] Calzati, S., & van Loenen, B. (2023). A fourth way to the digital transformation: The data republic as a fair data ecosystem. Data & Policy, 5, e21.

[2] Lnenicka, M., Nikiforova, A., Luterek, M., Milic, P., Rudmark, D., Neumaier, S., … & Rodríguez Bolívar, M. P. (2023). Understanding the development of public data ecosystems: from a conceptual model to a six-generation model of the evolution of public data ecosystems. Available at SSRN 4831881.

[3] Nikiforova, A., Rizun, N., Ciesielska, M., Alexopoulos, C., Miletič, A.(2023). Towards High-Value Datasets determination for data-driven development: a systematic literature review. In: Lindgren,I., Csáki, C., Kalampokis, E., Janssen, M.,, Viale Pereira,G.,Virkar, S., Tambouris, E., Zuiderwijk, A.Electronic Government. EGOV 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Cham

[4] Kassen, M. (2020). Open data and its peers: understanding promising harbingers from Nordic Europe. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 72(5), 765-785.

[5] Santos-Hermosa, G., Quarati, A., Loría-Soriano, E., & Raffaghelli, J. E. (2023). Why Does Open Data Get Underused? A Focus on the Role of (Open) Data Literacy. In Data Cultures in Higher Education: Emergent Practices and the Challenge Ahead (pp. 145-177). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

[6] Lnenicka, M., Nikiforova, A., Luterek, M., Azeroual, O., Ukpabi, D., Valtenbergs, V., & Machova, R. (2022). Transparency of open data ecosystems in smart cities: Definition and assessment of the maturity of transparency in 22 smart cities. Sustainable Cities and Society, 82, 103906.

[7] Nikiforova, A., Lnenicka, M., Milić, P., Luterek, M., & Rodríguez Bolívar, M. P. (2024, August). From the evolution of public data ecosystems to the evolving horizons of the forward-looking intelligent public data ecosystem empowered by emerging technologies. In International Conference on Electronic Government (pp. 402-418). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

[8] Loenen, B. van, Zuiderwijk, A., Vancauwenberghe, G., Lopez-Pellicer, F. J., Mulder, I., Alexopoulos, C., … & Flores, C. C. (2021). Towards value-creating and sustainable open data ecosystems: A comparative case study and a research agenda. JeDEM-eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government, 13(2), 1-27.

📢✍️🗞️New paper alert! “Sustainable open data ecosystems in smart cities: A platform theory-based analysis of 19 European cities”, Cities (Elsevier)

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

With this post I would like to introduce our new paper entitled “Sustainable open data ecosystems in smart cities: A platform theory-based analysis of 19 European cities” (authors: M. Lnenicka, A. Nikiforova, A. Clarinval, M. Luterek, D. Rudmark, S. Neumaier, K. Kević, M. P. R. Bolívar) that has been just published in Cities journal (Elsevier, Q1).

Smart cities aim to enhance citizens’ lives, urban services, and sustainability, with open data playing a crucial role in this development. Cities generate vast data that, if properly utilized within an open data ecosystem, can improve citizens’ lives and foster sustainability. Central to this ecosystem is the platform, which enables data collection, storage, processing, and sharing. Understanding modern Open Data Ecosystems is pivotal for sustainable urban development and governance, promoting collaboration and civic engagement. In this study, we aimed to identify key components shaping these efforts by conducting a platform theory-based multi-country comparative study of 19 🇪🇺 European cities across 8 countries – Austria 🇦🇹, Belgium 🇧🇪, Croatia 🇭🇷, Czech Republic 🇨🇿, Latvia 🇱🇻, Poland 🇵🇱, Sweden 🇸🇪. Considering both managerial and organizational, political and institutional, as well as information and technological contexts, drawing on both primary and secondary data, we:

  • 🔎🧐🔍identify 50 patterns that influence and shape sustainable Open Data Ecosystems and their platforms, i.e., Open Data Platform Ecosystems. We applied a cluster analysis to identify similarities between groups of patterns that influence and shape open (government) data efforts in smart cities.
  • 🔎🧐🔍explore the relationships between platforms and other Open Data Platform Ecosystems’ components by developing a respective model, and identifying internal platforms and other components that we classified into four categories, (a) data and information disclosure platforms such as open data portals, transparency portals, and official city websites, (b) thematic city development platforms focused on the subject of information such as smart city and smart projects platforms, participation platforms, citizen reporting or accountability platforms, crowdfunding platforms for local projects, startup platforms, etc., (c) specific data format disclosure platforms, and (d) content of information focused platforms, i.e., domain-specific platforms focused on data visualizations and storytelling, which include but are not limited to smart data portals, IoT and big data portals etc. In addition, we identify four OGD strategies used in the strategic planning of the city;
  • 🔎🧐🔍 empirically validate the conceptual findings of five types of Open Data Platform Ecosystems presented in the literature, redefining them from the conceptual to real-life implementation of the respective components in 19 cities with further description of how they contribute to the maturity concept of a sustainable ODE and respective platforms;
  • 🔎🧐🔍 considering the experience gained during the study and external pressures and environments that shape or influence Open Data Platform Ecosystems, based predominantly on best practices or pain points for Open Data Ecosystems in the sampled smart cities, we define 12 recommendations for policy planning and urban governance of more sustainable Open Data Ecosystems.

And this is just a short overview of our contributions. Sounds interesting? Read the article here!

In case of interest, cite this paper as:

Wrapping up 2023 🎆🎄🍾🥂🎇

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

The very last days of the year give us all time to reflect on what the past year has brought us. This years and these very last days of it are no exception. As usually, I will skip the part about pains and tears and try to focus only on positive things, because at the end of the day, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger” (Friedrich Nietzsche). Otherwise, this year has been full of a lot of different events and experiences, so I indeed want to take a moment and summarize what has so little time for some things (actually, not because you are lazy – as I often think of myself (a moment when people who know me well can laugh a little), but because you were busy with other things you gave you preference / priority over others).

So, how has 2023 been or what am I grateful for?

First of all, given the amount of emotion they bring, I am grateful for all those conferences I attended this year, serving as both – a part of the organizing committee, the program committee, the chair – chairing my (co-)organized workshops, the track (co-)chair, the speaker – presenting my works, or even serving as a keynote & invited speaker, as well as a plenary speaker and taking part in the “meet the publisher” session as a representative (Area Editor) of the journal. In total, I attended 13 international conferences (some of which I attended virtually), with some more events of a more national and/or regional nature.

Let me start with the role of keynote speaker, as I finally added another continent to “my list” of keynotes this year. Surprisingly, it was Europe. In other words, in previous years I have already served as a keynote or invited speaker at events in Latin America, Asia, Africa, but this year I gave 4 more talks in Asia and finally in Europe – 3 keynote talks / invited talks 🙂 (not to say how cool I am, but rather to express my gratitude to those who invite me to deliver keynote talks, despite my relatively young age but being interested in the content I deliver).

Moreover, I had the pleasure of covering all those topics that I love and deal (or dealt) with, namely public/ open data ecosystems, data quality management, information systems / data security, and intersection of artificial intelligence, data intelligence and collaborative intelligence. Moreover, I had the exceptional pleasure of delivering them to very different audiences, where two talks were delivered to academic circles (CARMA2023 and DemocrAI as part of PRICAI), one – to participants of one of the leading hackathons in Europe (HackCodeX Forum), and one – to representatives of industry (CyberCommando’s meetup 2023):

In addition, plenary debates within the Research and Innovation Forum 2023 “Innovation 5.0: Navigating shocks and crises in uncertain times Technology-Business-Society” (RiiForum2023): “Advances in ICT & the Society: threading the thin line between progress, development and mental health“, where I was kindly invited to take part as one of plenary speakers, is another wonderful experience worth mentioning, especially, when you are invited with the line stating that your “expertise and your contribution to the academic debate make you one of the trendsetters in current debate on open data and data quality management“. As part of this event, we – Prof. Dr. Yves Wautelet, Prof. Dr. Marek Krzystanek, Karolina Laurentowska & Prof. Marek Pawlicki – discussed disruptive technologies and their role in our professional lives in the past years, how they affected us and our colleagues, how they affect(ed) society and its specific groups, including their mental health, and general perception of technology, i.e. an enemy of humanity, or rather a friend and support, and how to make sure the second take place. And from this we have developed a discussion around AI, chatGPT, Metaverse, blockchain, even slightly touching on quantum computing. Of course, all this was placed in the context of democracy and freedoms / liberties. All in all, we approached the topic of governance and policy-making, which is too often reactive rather than proactive, which, in turn, leads to many negative consequences, as well as elaborated on the engineering practices. You can read about this here.

In addition, two international workshops were (co-)organized and chaired by me this year and took place as part of IFIP EGOV-CeDEM-EPART 2023 and dg.o 2023, namely:

  1. “PPPS’2023 – Proactive and Personalised Public Services: Searching for Meaningful Human Control in Algorithmic Government” workshop (chairs: Anastasija Nikiforova, Nitesh Bharosa, Dirk Draheim, Kuldar Taveter) as part of EGOV2023 – IFIP EGOV-CeDEM-EPART 2023, organizer and chair of , September 5-7, Budapest, Hungary (read more here)
  2. “Identification of high value dataset determinants: is there a silver bullet for efficient sustainability-oriented data-driven development?” workshop (chairs: Nikiforova A., Alexopoulos C., Rizun N., Ciesielska M.) as part of 24th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2023), Together in the unstable world: Digital government and solidarity, 11-14 July 2023, Gdańsk, Poland (read more here) – the third edition of this workshop.

The other role of session chair is particularly special as it allows you to actively participate in the discussion of all the works presented in those sessions, as well as to “drive” and “direct” the discussion established and developed by and with others participants. Therefore, I am often pleased to accept an invitation to chair sessions, and this year I did it for:

  • EGOV2023 – IFIP EGOV-CeDEM-EPART 2023, “Emerging Issues and Innovations” track
  • ICCNS2023 – The International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Communication, Networking and Services
  • Research and Innovation Forum 2023 “Innovation 5.0: Navigating shocks and crises in uncertain times Technology-Business-Society”
  • iMeta and FMEC 2023 – The International Conference on Intelligent Metaverse Technologies & Applications in conjunction with the The Eighth IEEE International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC)

At some of these conferences, along with some others, I also serve as part of the program or even organizing committee, which allows me to be closer to the event itself, being involved in it as much as possible. This, of course, requires some efforts (at times a lot of them), but still it is a very valuable experience that allows to derive many valuable insights for developing yourself – for this opportunity this year I am grateful to all those 18 conferences that I managed to count (EGOV, AMCIS, iLRN2023 etc.), in which I have been involved in one or another capacity, taking one or another role that spans from publicity chair to steering committee member. Similarly, it is always a pleasure for me to serve as invited reviewer for high-quality journals (15+), as well as to serve as editor for some of them.

Of course, the above involves participation in these conferences as a speaker/ presenter, presenting your own papers. Therefore, the next point to mention and express my gratitude to both my colleagues – co-authors, reviewers, editors and many more, are those contributions that were published or born this year.

That is, several articles were published this year – 22 to be more precise, some of which were simply published in 2023, although they were written earlier (including my past collaboration with Quantum Humanities network, the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre, BBMRI-ERIC Latvian National Node and others), 9 of which are journal papers (incl. both Government Information Quarterly – a top journal in public administration, social science and information science, and Nature-based European Journal of Human Genetics), 2 are book chapters, 8 – conference papers and 3 – whitepapers & reports, including those published by the European Commission (developed together with my colleagues from European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) Task Force “FAIR metrics and data quality”):

  1. Lnenicka, M., Nikiforova, A., Luterek, M., Milic, P., Rudmark, D., Neumaier, S., Santoro, C., Casiano Flores, C., Janssen, M., & Rodríguez Bolívar, M. P. (2024). Identifying patterns and recommendations of and for sustainable open data initiatives: A benchmarking-driven analysis of open government data initiatives among European countries. Government Information Quarterly, 41(1): 101898. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2023.101898, Q1, Impact Factor: 7.8
  2. Guerra-García, C., Nikiforova, A., Jiménez, S., Perez-Gonzalez, H. G., Ramírez-Torres, M., & Ontañon-García, L. (2023). ISO/IEC 25012-based methodology for managing data quality requirements in the development of information systems: Data quality by design. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 102152, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.datak.2023.102152, Q2, Impact Factor: 1.5, CiteScore: 4.9
  3. McBride, K., Nikiforova, A., and Lnenicka, M. (2023) ‘The Role of Open Government Data and Co-creation in Crisis Management: Initial Conceptual Propositions from the COVID-19 Pandemic’. Information Polity, 28(2), 219-238, http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/IP-220057, Q2, IF: 2.784, CiteScore: 4.4
  4. Ukpabi, D.C., Karjaluoto, H., Botticher, A., Nikiforova, A., Petrescu, D.I., Schindler, P., Valtenbergs, V., Lehmann, L., Framework for Understanding Quantum Computing Use Cases From A Multidisciplinary Perspective and Future Research Directions, Futures, 2023, 103277, ISSN 0016-3287, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103277, Q1 in (1) Business and International Management, (2) Development, (3) Sociology and Political Science), IF:3, CiteScore: 6.3
  5. Shao, D., Ishengoma, F.R., Alexopoulos, C., Saxena, S., Nikiforova, A. and Matheus, R. (2023), “Integration of IoT into e-government”, Foresight, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-04-2022-0048, Q2 (Business and International Management, Economics, Econometrics and Finance), IF: 1.581, CiteScore: 3.1
  6. Chang, V., Marshall, R., Xu, Q. A., & Nikiforova, A. (2023). E-commerce assistant application incorporating machine learning image classification. International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 17(1), 1-26, https://doi.org/10.1504/IJBSR.2023.127711
  7. Kante N., Nikiforova A., Kaleja K., Svandere A., Mežinska S., Pečulis R., Rovite V. Dynamic informed consent system, citizen science data management, quality control and integration for Latvian Genome Database, Abstracts from the 55th European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) Conference: Hybrid Posters. Eur J Hum Genet 31 (Suppl 1), 345–709 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41431-023-01338-4, Q1, IF:4.42
  8. Azeroual, O., Schöpfel, J., Pölönen, J., Nikiforova, A. (2023). FAIRification of CRIS: A Review. In: Coenen, F., et al. Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. IC3K 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1842. Springer, Cham
  9. Chang V., Xiao L., Nikiforova A., Xu Q., Liu B. (2023) The Study of PGP Web of Trust Based on Social Network Analysis, International Journal of Business Information Systems, 44(2), pp.285-302, https://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJBIS.2023.134956, SNIP: 0.551, CiteScore: 1.7 (Q2 – Information Systems and Management, Management Information Systems)
  10. Nikiforova, A. (2023). Open Data Hackathon as a Tool for Increased Engagement of Generation Z: To Hack or Not to Hack?. In: Ortiz-Rodríguez, F., Tiwari, S., Sicilia, MA., Nikiforova, A. (eds) Electronic Governance with Emerging Technologies. EGETC 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22950-3_13
  11. Nikiforova, A., Rizun, N., Ciesielska, M., Alexopoulos, C., Miletić, A. (2023). Towards High-Value Datasets Determination for Data-Driven Development: A Systematic Literature Review. In: Lindgren, I., et al. Electronic Government. EGOV 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14130. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41138-0_14
  12. Nikiforova, A., Alexopoulos, C., Rizun, N., Ciesielska, M. (2023) Identification of High-Value Dataset determinants: is there a silver bullet for efficient sustainability-oriented data-driven development? In Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (pp. 676-678), 10.1145/3598469.3598556
  13. Nikiforova, A., Draheim, D., Taveter, K., Bharosa, N. (2023). PPPS’2023 – Proactive and Personalised Public Services: Searching for Meaningful Human Control in Algorithmic Government. EGOV-CeDEM-ePart2023, September,5-7, 2023, Budapest, Hungary
  14. Azeroual O., Nacheva R., Nikiforova A., Störl U., Fraisse A. (2023) Predictive Analytics intelligent decision-making framework and testing it through sentiment analysis on Twitter data. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Computer Systems and Technologies (CompSysTech ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 42–53. https://doi.org/10.1145/3606305.3606309
  15. O. Azeroual, A. Nikiforova and K. Sha, “Overlooked Aspects of Data Governance: Workflow Framework For Enterprise Data Deduplication,” 2023 International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Communication, Networking and Services (ICCNS), Valencia, Spain, 2023, pp. 65-73, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICCNS58795.2023.10193478.
  16. Nikiforova, A. (2023). Data Security as a Top Priority in the Digital World: Preserve Data Value by Being Proactive and Thinking Security First. In: Visvizi, A., Troisi, O., Grimaldi, M. (eds) Research and Innovation Forum 2022. RIIFORUM 2022. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19560-0_1
  17. Daase, C.; Staegemann, D.; Nikiforova, A.; Chang, V.; Hintsch, J.; Volk, M. and Turowski, K. (2023). Towards the Creation of a Holistic Video Analytics Platform for Retail Environments. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies – ICSBT; ISBN 978-989-758-667-5; ISSN 2184-772X, SciTePress, pages 216-225. DOI: 10.5220/0012148600003552
  18. Nikiforova, A., Flores, M.A.A. and Lytras, M.D. (2023), “The Role of Open Data in Transforming the Society to Society 5.0: A Resource or a Tool for SDG-Compliant Smart Living?“, Lytras, M.D., Housawi, A.A. and Alsaywid, B.S. (Ed.) Smart Cities and Digital Transformation: Empowering Communities, Limitless Innovation, Sustainable Development and the Next Generation, Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 219-252. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80455-994-920231011
  19. Nikiforova, A., Daskevics, A. and Azeroual, O. (2023), “NoSQL Security: Can My Data-driven Decision-making Be Influenced from Outside?“, Visvizi, A., Troisi, O. and Grimaldi, M. (Ed.) Big Data and Decision-Making: Applications and Uses in the Public and Private Sector (Emerald Studies in Politics and Technology), Emerald Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 59-73. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80382-551-920231005
  20. Lacagnina, C., David, R., Nikiforova, A., Kuusniemi, M. E., Cappiello, C., Biehlmaier, O., Wright, L., Schubert, C., Bertino, A., Thiemann, H., & Dennis, R. (2023). Towards a data quality framework for EOSC. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7515816
  21. Wilkinson MD, Sansone SA, Méndez E., David R., Dennis R., Hecker D., Kleemola M., Lacagnina C., Nikiforova A., Castro L. (2023) Community-driven governance of FAIRness assessment: an open issue, an open discussion [version 2; peer review: 2 approved with reservations]. Open Res Europe 2023, 2:146 (https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.15364.2)
  22. Bötticher A., Nikiforova A., Ruhland J., Kettemann M. (2023), Reframing Political Power in the Digital Constellation: Taking Technopolitics Seriously, Future Law Working Paper 2023-2, Department of Theory and Future of Law, University of Innsbruck, Austria

It also brought some recognition for which I am very grateful. To name just a few…

“ISO/IEC 25012-based methodology for managing data quality requirements in the development of information systems: Towards data quality by design” (César Guerra-García, Anastasija Nikiforova, Samantha Jiménez, Héctor G. Perez-Gonzalez, Marco Ramírez-Torres, Luis Ontañon-García) turned out to be interesting for the readership and since July 2023 (when I noticed this) holds in the list of the most downloaded articles from Data & Knowledge Engineering in the last 90 days, which, of course, makes us very happy (it would be great, however, to be in the most cited or better – influential -works :))

“Towards High-Value Datasets determination for data-driven development: a systematic literature review” (Nikiforova A., Rizun N., Ciesielska M., Alexopoulos C., Miletič A.) received a recommendation from The Living Library that seeks to provide actionable knowledge on governance innovation, informing and inspiring policymakers, practitioners, technologists, and researchers working at the intersection of governance, innovation, and technology in a timely, digestible and comprehensive manner, identifying the “signal in the noise” by curating research, best practices, points of view, new tools, and developments, has included it in their collection. This is already the second paper recommended by the Living Library (the first one was this paper) that is recommended by them, what makes me very proud – thanks a lot!

“The Role of Open Data in Transforming the Society to Society 5.0: A Resource or a Tool for SDG-Compliant Smart Living?“ (Nikiforova, Flores, Lytras), was recommended by FIT Academy as one of the “five outstanding articles about open data published by top experts from around the world” naming it to be “a groundbreaking research paper”, which was a very great surprise to us as authors.

According to ResearchGate calculated Interest Score, my score is higher than 99% of ResearchGate members who first published in the same year as me, namely, 2018, which, however, means that more globally, i.e., among all ResearchGate members my current Research Interest Score is higher than 90% of researchers registered in it – although there is a lot of room for improvement, I still find it to be something to be grateful for to all my colleagues with whose support this has been achieved.

Moreover, this year I was listed in the Stanford University database of top 2% scientists! I recognize that this is just a single year category for 2022, and it is about sub-fields (Artificial Intelligence, Information Systems, Information Communication Technologies) same as I realize that citation metrics-based evaluations is not the best approach to assessing the impact and quality of research & researcher (although this database not only acknowledges, but also tries to tackle this issue to some extent), but for me it is a real achievement that made this year special!

Here I would also like to acknowledge the achievements of others, since this year I also witnessed 4 PhD defenses, acting as both opponent, internal reviewer and defense committee, all of which were successful. Here, I would like to once again congratulate both new PhD holders, namely:

  • Dr. Rozha K. Ahmed and her PhD thesis “Digital Transformation of Court Processes: Driving Forces, Success Factors, Regulations and Technology Acceptance” (TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology, TalTech School of IT) – read it here;
  • Dr. Abiola Paterne Chokki and his PhD thesis “Open Government Data: Empowering Reuse through Collaboration, Data Quality, and Data Storytelling” (The University of Namur / Université de Namur) – read it here;
  • Dr. Sidra Azmat Butt and her PhD thesis “A Digital Collaborative Platform to Facilitate Innovative Solutions for the Silver Economy” (TalTech – Tallinn University of Technology) – read it here;
  • Dr. Abasi-amefon Affia, who has successfully defended her PhD thesis “A Framework and Teaching Approach for IoT Security Risk Management” (University of Tartu) – read it here;

But, of course, I tried not only to acquire new knowledge and develop new skills or improve existing ones, but also to share them with others – students – my own (Business Process Management, as well as Systems Modelling courses) and of my colleagues, colleagues, pupils, school teachers, industry and others. This year I had a few more opportunities to do this by:

  • continuing collaboration with Latvian Open Technologies Association and serving as a mentor for Open Data hackathon and Idea Generator (this year focused on digital wallet) for pupils, organized by the Latvian Open Technologies Association with the support of Vides aizsardzības un reģionālās attīstības ministrija (VARAM)/ Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of Republic of Latvia, Latvijas Valsts radio un televīzijas centrs / Latvia State Radio and Television Centre, Valsts izglītības satura centrs / National Centre for Education of the Republic of Latvia, E-Klase, NOBID Consortium, Rīgas Tehniskā universitāte (Riga Technical University), European Commission and supporters – Omniva, ZZ Dats, Latvijas Banka/ The Bank of Latvia and others. This year the main topic of the hackathon was Digital Wallet for secure identification and wide service opportunities within Europe, as part of which dozens of pupils brought on the table great ideas on how the combination of open data and digital wallets can contribute to the development and improvement in such a different sectors, and improve lives of society – with healthcare, wellbeing, sustainability, ecology and simplification of processes as the main topics covered by participants (read a bit more here). This was my fourth hackathon in a row with LATA and it seems not the last;
  • continuing collaboration with the “School of Excellence” (latv. Izcilības skola), organized by the “Vertikāle” Youth Foundation in cooperation with the University of Latvia (Latvijas Universitāte) for the most promising 10th-12th grade students / brightest minds, helping them make decision about their future career. In this invited lecture, we looked at several topics that they could connect they career with – computer science, information systems, software engineering, artificial intelligence, collaborative intelligence, data intelligence, data quality management, open data, open government data – I hope this will help them make a decision, and, hopefully in favor of IT! This was my third time participating in this series of lectures, and I was already unofficially invited to continue this “tradition”;
  • continuing collaboration with Riga TechGirls as part of their exceptional program supported by Google.org (“Google Impact challenge” grant, in addition to local supporters such as the Ministry of Education and Science of Latvia, the Ministry of Culture, Riga city council (Rīgas Dome)), titled “Human on technology”, which is intended for more than 2000 Latvian teachers with the aim of disrupting technophobia and provide them with digital skills that are “must-have” in this digital world/ era, where in the last two years I have acted as both the lecturer and the lead mentor for the digital development workshop held as a part of the “Information and data literacy” module (read more…)
  • continuing collaboration with both University of South-Eastern (Norway) and the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR) (Brazil), serving as a guest lecturer for them – also the third year in a row for both of them. In the case of the University of South-Eastern Norway, these lectures are part of “Emerging Technologies in Information Systems“ course developed by Salah Uddin Ahmed, and this year my guest lecture was on Data Quality Management entitled “Data Quality for AI or AI for Data quality: advances in Data Quality Management for the success and sustainability of emerging technologies, business and society“, while in the case of the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR), my lecture “Open Data Ecosystems in and for sustainable development of data-driven smart cities and Society 5.0“ is part of “Smart Cities” course delivered by Regina Negri Pagani;
  • making a short research visit to the Université de Namur (Belgium), where I delivered a seminar on my past, current and future research activities, mainly focusing on two areas, namely Data Quality Management, and the open data-, open government data- and public data ecosystems- related topics, covering both technological and social aspects of the above, and their role in the context of Smart City, Society 5.0, sustainable development with the general title of the seminar “Data Ecosystems: from User Centered systems engineering to (open) data management for sustainable and smart living & society”. I was very surprised by a high attendance and very grateful to everyone who managed to find the time for this, especially those colleagues who brought some others – it was a great discussion of different viewpoints, which followed by the closed defense of Abiola Paterne Chokki that fit nicely this discussion as well!

Finally, several ongoing activities to be mentioned includes:

This is a very short list of the events that I wanted to emphasize, and therefore, a short list of what I am grateful for this year and all those who were or are part of it. Overall, it was a busy and eventful year, to which I grateful for all the positive experiences and opportunities to transfer existing knowledge and acquire new ones from all those events and people I met there. I hope the next year will be even better. And in this regard, I wish us all a peaceful, joyful and productive year, in which we can cooperate and collaborate exclusively with those we respect and want to work with!

created with IllusionDiffusion, (huggingface.co)
Created with IllusionDiffusion, (huggingface.co)

Thank 2023 and bye! Welcome 2024! Happy 2024!

Keynote at the 5th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2023)

Anastasija Nikiforova 1 Comment

June 28 I had the honor to participate in the opening of CARMA2023 – 5th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics “Internet and Big Data in Economics and Social Sciences” delivering my keynote “Public data ecosystems in and for smart cities: how to make open / Big / smart / geo data ecosystems value-adding for SDG-compliant Smart Living and Society 5.0?” in the spectacular city of Sevilla, Spain 🇪🇸 🇪🇸 🇪🇸. What a honor to open the conference, immediately after the inaugural speech by organizers and sponsors, including representatives of Joint Research Center, European Commission (JRC), who even mentioned the topics I covered in my keynote (not limited to them, of course) as those that make this conference an event to attend and to learn from!!!

In this talk, as the title suggests, I:

  • elaborated on the concepts of public /open data (incl. OGD), smart city and SDG and how are they related?
  • introduced the concept of Society 5.0 and how is it related to open data?
  • and finally, and more importantly, public/ open data ecosystem – what it is? what does it consist of?

I then dived into (1) data-related aspects of the public data ecosystem, i.e. what are the data-related prerequisites for a sustainable and resilient data ecosystem? (2) data portal / platforms as entry points and how to make it sufficiently attractive for the target audience? (3) stakeholder engagement – how to involve the target audience? what are the benefits of their involvement? and some more things.

Public data ecosystem part was built around our “Transparency of open data ecosystems in smart cities: Definition and assessment of the maturity of transparency in 22 smart cities“, with some references to other studies such us Transparency-by-design: What is the role of open data portals?, “Timeliness of Open Data in Open Government Data Portals Through Pandemic-related Data: A long data way from the publisher to the user“, “Open government data portal usability: A user-centred usability analysis of 41 open government data portals“, which were previously noticed by the Living Library that recommends studies they see as the “signal in the noise” and the Open Data Institute.

For the data, apart of almost “classical things”, I referred to the topic of “high-value datasets” and dived into a taxonomy we presented in “Towards High-Value Datasets determination for data-driven development: a systematic literature review” (also recommended by the Living Library as the “sound in the noise”), enriched by the results of my earlier study “Towards enrichment of the open government data: a stakeholder-centered determination of High-Value Data sets for Latvia” as well as results of two international workshops we organized.

The part on the public / open data, smart city, SDG and Society 5.0 and how they are interrelated was, in turn, based on our Chapter “The Role of Open Data in Transforming the Society to Society 5.0: A Resource or a Tool for SDG-Compliant Smart Living?”, which was called by FIT Academy “a groundbreaking research”.

And for the engagement, it mostly was about the workshops, datathons, hackathons, data competitions, as we as a co-creation and how the co-creation ecosystem occurs, what are the prerequisites for this etc., incl. referencing to “Open data hackathon as a tool for increased engagement of Generation Z: to hack or not to hack?” and “The Role of Open Government Data and Co-creation in Crisis Management: Initial Conceptual Propositions from the COVID-19 Pandemic“

CARMA is a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas and advances on how emerging research methods and sources are applied to different fields of social sciences as well as to discuss current and future challenges with main focus on the topics such as Internet and Big Data sources in economics and social sciences including Social media and public opinion mining, Web scraping, Google Trends and Search Engine data, Geospatial and mobile phone data, Open data and public data, Big Data methods in economics and social sciences such as Sentiment analysis, Internet econometrics, AI and Machine learning applications, Statistical learning, Information quality and assessment, Crowdsourcing, Natural Language processing, Explainability and interpretability, the applications of the above including but not limited to Politics and social media, Sustainability and development, Finance applications, Official statistics, Forecasting and nowcasting, Bibliometrics and sciencetometrics, Social and consumer behaviour, mobility patterns, eWOM and social media marketing, Labor market, Business analytics with social media, Advances in travel, tourism and leisure, Digital management, Marketing Intelligence analytics, Data governance, and Digital transition and global society, which, in turn, expects contributions in relation to Privacy and legal aspects, Electronic Government, Data Economy, Smart Cities, Industry adoption.

In addition to the regular sessions, poster session and two keynotes, a Special JRC session (EC) took place, during which Luca Barbaglia, Nestor Duch Brown, Matteo Sostero and Paolo Canfora presented projects they work on.

Keynote certificateDownload

Great thanks goes to organizers and sponsors of CARMA2023 – Universidad de Sevilla, Cátedra Metropol Parasol, Cátedra Digitalización Empresarial, IBM, Universitat Politècnica de València, Joint Research Center – European Commission and Coca-Cola, who made this event a true success. Enjoyed this experience very much! Excellent venue! Great audience! ¡Muchas gracias!

References:

CFP for The IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Communication, Networking and Services (ICCNS2023)

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

On behalf of the organizers (Technical Program Chair, Steering Committee, and finally publicity chair) of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Communication, Networking and Services (ICCNS2023), I am inviting everyone, who is conducting research in this area, to consider submitting the paper to it.

Call for Papers:

New advancements in wireless communication systems such as Fifth-Generation (5G), Beyond Fifth-Generation (B5G), and Sixth-Generation (6G) networks will allow for new and unprecedented services to be made available for users with nearly unlimited capacity. These services will be the core driver for future digital transformation of our cities and communities. This will be accompanied by a ubiquitous deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure and supported by computing capacity that will be available at the edge of the network and in the cloud. This computing infrastructure will handle the processing of data generated by users and services. Such a complex and diverse system will require the applications running on the computing/networking infrastructure to be Intelligent, efficient and sustainable. Additionally, the infrastructure will require smart control and automation systems to integrate and manage its different components. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its applications will play a significant role in the design, deployment, automation, and management of future services. This will include applications that will be running on the edge and on cloud servers, networking applications to handle the flow of data between the users and the computing system, and intelligent automation and management software operating on the system. The International Conference on Intelligent Computing, Networking, and Services is aiming to provide an opportunity to present state of the art research in the intersections of Computing, Networking, and Services that are supported by Artificial Intelligence.

Submission Link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iccns2023

Researchers from both the industry and academia are encouraged to submit their original research contributions in all major areas, which include, but are not limited to the following main tracks:

💡Track 1: Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals

  • Artificial Intelligent Systems
  • Artificial Intelligent Theory
  • Artificial Intelligent applications in Computers and Communications
  • Artificial Intelligent and Robotics Technologies
  • Artificial Intelligent and cloud computing
  • Artificial Intelligent for Economic paradigms and game theory
  • Machine and Deep Learning of Knowledge
  • Artificial Intelligent based Distributed Knowledge and Processing
  • Artificial Intelligent for Human-Robot Interactions

💡Track 2: Intelligent Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems

  • Intelligent IoT Applications and Services
  • Intelligent security for the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems
  • Intelligent Internet of Things architectures and protocols
  • Intelligent Cyber Physical Systems (CPS)
  • Blockchain-based application in Intelligent Manufacturing: Industrial Internet of Things,
  • Blockchain and Secure Critical Infrastructure with Industry 4.0
  • Intelligent manufacture and management
  • Consensus and mining algorithms suited for resource-limited IoTs
  • Blockchain-based Controlled mobility and QoS
  • Blockchain-based energy optimization techniques in WSN
  • Blockchain-based Software defined networks

💡Track 3: Edge Intelligence and Federated Learning

  • Distributed and federated machine learning in edge computing
  • Theory and Applications of Edge Intelligence
  • Middleware and runtime systems for Edge Intelligence
  • Programming models compliant with Edge Intelligence
  • Scheduling and resource management for Edge Intelligence
  • Data allocation and application placement strategies for Edge Intelligence
  • Osmotic computing with edge continuum, Microservices and MicroData architectures
  • ML/AI models and algorithms for load balancing
  • Theory and Applications of federated learning
  • Federated learning and privacy-preserving large-scale data analytics
  • MLOps and ML pipelines at edge computing
  • Transfer learning, interactive learning, and Reinforcement Learning for edge computing
  • Modeling and simulation of EI and edge-to-cloud environments
  • Security, privacy, trust, and provenance issues in edge computing
  • Distributed consensus and blockchains at edge architecture
  • Blockchain networking for Edge Computing Architecture
  • Blockchain technology for Edge Computing Security
  • Blockchain-based access controls for Edge-to-cloud continuum
  • Blockchain-enabled solutions for Cloud and Edge/Fog IoT systems
  • Forensic Data Analytics compliant with Edge Intelligence

💡Track 4: Intelligent Networking in Beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G Wireless Communication

  • Intelligent Networking in Beyond 5G/6G Network Architectures
  • large-scale Internet of Things in B5G/6G
  • Vehicular networks in B5G/6G
  • Blockchain with lightweight computation
  • Service and applications for vehicular clouds in B5G/6G
  • Future internet architectures for B5G/6G
  • Intelligent networking services
  • Emerging networks in B5G/6G
  • Byzantine-tolerant FL
  • Churn-tolerant FL
  • FL for NGN and 6G
  • B5G/6G based IoT healthcare systems

💡Track 5: Intelligent Big Data Management and Processing

  • Intelligent Data Fusion
  • Intelligent Analytics and Data mining
  • Intelligent Distributed data management
  • Distributed transaction for blockchain
  • Intelligent Data Science and Data Engineering
  • Protocols for management and processing of data

💡Track 6: Intelligent Security and Privacy

  • Authentication and authorization
  • Applications of blockchain technologies in digital forensic
  • Privacy technologies
  • Blockchain-based threat intelligence and threat analytics techniques
  • Blockchain-based open-source tools
  • Forensics readiness of blockchain technologies
  • Blockchain Attacks on Existing Systems
  • Blockchain Consensus Algorithms
  • Blockchain-based Intrusion Detection/Prevention
  • Security and Privacy in Blockchain and Critical Infrastructure
  • Attacks on Blockchain and Critical Infrastructure
  • Blockchain and Secure Critical Infrastructure with Smart Grid

💡Track 7: Blockchain Research & Applications for Intelligent Networks and Services

  • State-of-the-art of the Blockchain technology and cybersecurity
  • Blockchain-based security solutions of smart cities infrastructures
  • Blockchain in connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) and ITS)
  • Blockchain Technologies and Methodologies
  • Recent development and emerging trends Blockchain
  • New models, practical solutions and technological advances related to Blockchain
  • Theory of Blockchain in Cybersecurity
  • Applications of blockchain technologies in computer & hardware security
  • Implementation challenges facing blockchain technologies
  • Blockchain in social networking
  • Performance metric design, modeling and evaluation of blockchain systems
  • Network and computing optimization in blockchains
  • Experimental prototyping and testbeds for blockchains
  • Blockchain networking for Edge Computing Architecture
  • Blockchain technology for Edge Computing Security
  • Blockchain-based access controls for Edge-to-cloud continuum
  • Blockchain-enabled solutions for Cloud and Edge/Fog IoT systems
  • Forensic Data Analytics compliant with Edge Intelligence

Two workshops are scheduled to take place as part of ICCNS that you cannot miss, namely:

🗓️🗓️🗓️ IMPORTANT DATES

  • Full paper submission: April 21st, 2023 (Firm and Final)
  • Full paper acceptance notification: May 6th, 2023
  • Full paper camera-ready submission: May 20th, 2023
iccns2023Download

For any inquiries, please contact: intelligenttechorg@gmail.com.

Submit the paper and meet our team in Valencia in June, 2023!
 

With best wishes,

ICCNS2023 organizers