Tag data quality

Wrapping up 2025! 🌲🥂✨

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

2025 is close to be over and looking back at 2025, what stays with me most is not the accumulation of roles, publications, or events, although each of them matters, but the sense that the work is gradually finding its place, creating space for better questions, and shaped, refined, sustained by people and conversations rather than metrics alone. This year marked a consolidation of my research agenda around digital, data, and AI governance, with a strong emphasis on responsible AI adoption, public value, and sustainable data ecosystems. It also continued earlier started transition – from building a research profile to more explicitly shaping research spaces, communities, and conversations.

From Research Agenda to Institutional Responsibility

In 2025, I was appointed Associate Professor of Applied AI and Information Systems, a role that formalized something that had already been happening in practice – working at the intersection of AI innovation, governance, and responsibility. This appointment aligned naturally with my work on responsible AI adoption in the public sector, research on data-centric challenges, governance models, and institutional readiness, and a growing focus on sustainable and trustworthy digital ecosystems, and as of this year on Green AI, including collaborative work with KNOW Center and ENFIELD.

At the University of Tartu, we also laid important foundations for the future – the establishment of the IDEAS Lab (Intelligent Distributed Environments and Systems), and hence my new role as lead of the Responsible Innovation and Digital Governance Team (RISING) – a space that, hopefully, will become more visible in 2026.

Research Milestones: Asking Better Questions About AI

A symbolic, but meaningful, milestone this year was publishing my 100th and 101st (IT people will get the point of the later number, too) scientific papers. These special papers are “Responsible AI Adoption in the Public Sector: A Data-Centric Taxonomy of AI Adoption Challenges” – the work that crystallizes our empirical research into a structured understanding of why responsible AI adoption remains difficult, even when technical solutions exist, and “Reflections on the nature of digital government research: Marking the 50th anniversary of Government Information Quarterly” marking the 50th anniversary of Government Information Quarterly – the top journal I read extensively as a master’s student, and now serve as an editorial board member, contributing reflections on the journal’s past, present, and future trajectory. That continuity — from reader to contributor to steward — feels particularly meaningful.

Beyond this, 2025 included some more contributions to Government Information Quarterly, Computer Law & Security Review, Telematics and Informatics, Information Polity, Data & Policy, EGOV2025, HICSS2025, CAiSE2025, DGO2025, and some more with topics ranging from data ecosystems, data and AI governance, post-bureaucratic governance, dark data, UX of open data portals to AI in education. What is more important, some of these papers were contributions of my students’ – from early master students to doctoral ones – my own or those more “adopted” ones I am always happy to collaborate with. All in all, seven students in total published their works this year and I hope for many more in the years to come!

Global Dialogue: From Keynotes to Fireside Chats

In 2025, I had the privilege to contribute to global conversations on AI and governance through keynotes, invited talks, panels, and workshops, including invited talk for EU Open Data Days 2025 on “Data for AI or AI for data,” panel on “AI and Data Science Revolutions” and “National Data Strategies in Europe” with Data for Policy, keynote “Responsible AI Adoption for a Sustainable Future: Balancing Opportunities and Risks“ for International Conference on Innovative Approaches and Applications for Sustainable Development, invited talk on “Mapping the Roadblocks: Towards Responsible Artificial Intelligence Adoption in the Public Sector“ for International Summer School on Digital Government and some more seminars and fireside chats with Cambridge University, LSE, The Governance Lab, Microsoft Open Data Policy Lab on future of open data in the age of (Gen)AI and AI governance among others. These conversations reaffirmed responsible data practices and even more so responsible AI is no longer a niche concern – it is now a core governance challenge across regions, policy domains, and institutional contexts.

Community Building: Workshops, Tracks, and Field-Shaping

2025 was also a year of active field-building, through organizing and leading scholarly spaces where new ideas can emerge. Together with my colleagues we organized workshops at ECAI2025 (Green-aware AI), IJCAI2025, PRICAI2025 (AI and democracy and AI in public sector), CBI-EDOC2025 (Enterprise Architecture for Augmented Intelligence workshop) and (mini)tracks at HICSS2026 (Sustainable and Trustworthy Digital and Data Ecosystems for Societal Transformation), dg.o2025 (Sustainable Public and Open Data Ecosystems for Inclusive and Innovative Digital Government), EGOV2025 (Emerging Issues and Innovations). For the later one, we also organized Junior Faculty School and Doctoral Colloquium. Apart of this, I took several new editorial roles, including Senior Editor at IEEE TTS, as well as joined initiatives such as the AIS Women’s Network College (incl. as mentor), Women in AI, and Digital Statecraft Academy, which aims to guide fellows in navigating complex digital governance challenges and contribute to advancing responsible, inclusive, and sustainable policy and technology practices. I am very eager to see how these all will evolve looking forward contributing to the success of these joint efforts!

Perhaps one of the most surreal moments was hosting a Turing Award winner – a reminder of how far the field has come, and how much responsibility comes with shaping its future direction. Unfortunately, though, I missed meeting Yoshua Bengio in montreal this year, when my colleagues with whom we co-organized the workshop with IJCAI2025 made it, visiting his MILA lab… But one Turing award recipient at a time, I guess..

This year also brought external recognition, such as being ranked Top voice in Estonia in Data Science (as per Favikon), Top-1 researcher globally in Open Government and top Government and Engineering and CS researcher (as per ScholarGPS, according to last five years achievements), top 2% of scientists in Artificial Intelligence (as per Stanford University’s database). While I am grateful, among all achievements, the most rewarding was witnessing the success of my students and I hope much to come along both lines in the future. Their growth is a constant reminder that academic impact is not only measured in citations — but in confidence built, curiosity nurtured, and doors opened. At the end of the day, it is all about people. I am thus grateful to all the collaborators I am surrounded with – those I continue to learn from, and to those who now learn with me — both equally shape the work and sustain the motivation to carry it forward, as well as help to have some fun that is a special type of the fuel for our work!

Looking Ahead to 2026

The coming year will bring new responsibilities and, hopefully, opportunities. But above all, I hope 2026 continues what 2025 reinforced. As of now we already work hard on preparing several events to take place and I warmly invite you to consider joining us:

If you’d like to continue these conversations in person, you can also find me speaking at events such as ICDEc2026, ISIoT2026, and AI Summit Europe 2026, discussing questions like What happens when AI ambitions collide with governance capacity, legitimacy, and readiness? How do we design AI-enabled systems that don’t collapse under institutional and societal pressure? Are we moving from e-government to AI_government or maybe even toward something closer to an agentic state — and what does that really mean? If you work on AI, data, governance, sustainability, or public value, I would love to meet you — to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, and think together about how to design systems that are not only intelligent, but also legitimate, resilient, and trustworthy.

Wishing a peaceful and joyful holiday season, and a thoughtful, kind, and inspiring year ahead to all of us!

From “Data Quality for AI” to “AI for Data Quality Management”: Insights from BIR 2025

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

Back in September, our paper “From Data Quality for AI to AI for Data Quality: A Systematic Review of Tools for AI-Augmented Data Quality Management in Data Warehouses” was presented at the BIR Business Informatics Research Conference (BIR) in my hometown, Riga.

The paper, authored by my former student Heidi Carolina Tamm (now DW Lead Designer at Swedbank Estonia) and myself, explores a central question: can AI do more than just consume high-quality data—can it actively create and maintain it?

From “Data Quality for AI” to “Data Quality for AI & AI for Data Quality Management”

High-quality data underpins analytics, AI performance, and regulatory compliance, yet DQ management remains complex, resource-intensive, and often manual. With global data projected to reach 175 zettabytes by 2025, poor DQ carries real business costs—up to 19% of companies report customer loss due to inaccurate or incomplete data.

Traditionally, data quality (DQ) management focuses on ensuring AI has reliable, clean data. We propose a complementary perspective: using AI itself to enhance and automate data quality management. This is particularly relevant for enterprise data warehouses (DWs), which remain central despite the growth of decentralized and domain-driven architectures.

To this end, we systematically reviewed 151 DQ tools, evaluating their support for AI-augmented DQM, particularly automation of rule detection and anomaly identification. Key findings:

  • only 10 tools fully support AI-augmented DQM in data warehouses;
  • most tools focus on data cleansing rather than leveraging AI for rule discovery or explainable quality improvements;
  • metadata + rule-based + ML hybrid approaches show promise but remain underutilized;
  • SQL and natural language rule definitions are rarely supported, yet essential for practical use;
  • explainable AI and governance features are critical for trust;
  • cloud scalability with GDPR compliance is a must for enterprise adoption.

For organizations, AI-driven DQM goes beyond cleaning and profiling, enabling detection, enforcement, and explanation of data quality issues. This leads to better compliance, efficiency, and trust in enterprise data ecosystems.

For researchers and tool developers, there’s a clear need for next-generation DQ tools that are explainable, support SQL/natural language rules, integrate reconciliation logic, and operate under real-world regulatory and architectural constraints. LLMs and AI models can play a role, though they are not a silver bullet; early research shows strong potential.

Our study highlights that while AI has mainly been seen as a consumer of data quality, there is an untapped opportunity to use AI to actively improve DQ, shifting from “Data Quality for AI” to “Data Quality for AI and AI for Data Quality Management.” This research provides practical guidance for organizations and sets the stage for next-generation AI-augmented data governance and DQM solutions.

Read more in the article.

Call for Papers: Accountable and Inclusive Digital Ecosystems for Public Value Creation — dg.o 2026

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

Call for Papers is now open for our track “Accountable and Inclusive Digital Ecosystems for Public Value Creation” at the 27th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2026). The conference will take place June 2–5, 2026, at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA.

This track continues and expands the work we initiated in 2024 and 2025 on public and open data ecosystems. Responding to new technological and societal realities, we broaden the focus this year toward AI-enabled, interoperable, sustainable, and human-centered digital ecosystems—their design, governance, and impact on public value creation.

Why this track? Why now?

Digital ecosystems are undergoing profound transformation. Emerging technologies—AI (including generative AI), interoperable data spaces, IoT, cloud–edge infrastructures, and new governance frameworks—now form the backbone of digital public action. These technologies unlock unprecedented opportunities for insight generation, collaboration, transparency, and service co-creation across sectors.

Yet they also introduce new challenges: ethics, accountability, trust, digital literacy, and inclusion. As governments and organizations navigate this shift, we need research that bridges technical innovation, institutional capacity, and societal expectations.

Our track provides a space for this conversation.

What the track explores

We invite contributions that examine the conceptual, technical, institutional, and societal dimensions of digital and data ecosystems, with an emphasis on accountability, sustainability, inclusivity, and public value.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Ethical and accountable AI, data governance, algorithmic transparency, privacy, security
  • Interoperability and trust frameworks, identity infrastructures, standards, reference architectures
  • AI, Generative AI, LLMs, NLP, IoT/cloud/edge integration, green computing, Metaverse applications
  • Human–AI interaction, explainability, accessibility, inclusion in digital public services
  • Stakeholder engagement, empowerment, co-creation, digital literacy, data sovereignty
  • Institutional and organizational mechanisms for ecosystem governance and sustainable management
  • Open, public, and cross-sector data ecosystems, including data spaces and platform ecosystems
  • Social, economic, and environmental sustainability and other public value dimensions
  • Case studies from cities, communities, public-sector organizations, and multi-stakeholder collaborations
  • Impact assessments of digital ecosystems on individuals, organizations, and society

Connection to the dg.o 2026 theme

The conference theme—Collaborative Digital Transformation for Public Value Creation—aligns perfectly with our track’s purpose.
Digital ecosystems represent socio-technical infrastructures where governance, technology, and societal needs intersect. Understanding how to make these ecosystems accountable, inclusive, and sustainable is essential for collaborative digital transformation and for delivering tangible societal outcomes.

Track chairs

  • Anastasija Nikiforova, University of Tartu (Estonia)
  • Anthony Simonofski, Université de Namur (Belgium)
  • Anneke Zuiderwijk – van Eijk, Delft University of Technology (Netherlands)
  • Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar, Universidad de Granada (Spain)

Together, we bring perspectives from digital government, data governance, public administration, information systems, and socio-technical ecosystem design.

Submission details

Full CFP and submission guidelines are available here:
🔗 https://dgsociety.org/dgo-2026/

We look forward to receiving your submissions and to advancing the conversation on how accountable, inclusive, and sustainable digital ecosystems can drive the next generation of public value creation.

If you have questions about fit or ideas you’d like to discuss, feel free to reach out.

HICSS2026 Sustainable and Trustworthy Digital and Data Ecosystems for Societal Transformation mini-track

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment


Are you researching sustainable and trustworthy digital ecosystems? Then, submit your work to our HICSS2026 “Sustainable and Trustworthy Digital and Data Ecosystems for Societal Transformation” mini-track we chair together with Daniel Staegemann and Asif Gill at the Association for Information Systems Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-59)!

In an era where data is the foundation of digital transformation, well-designed and managed sustainable and trustworthy digital and data ecosystems are critical for artificial intelligence (AI), strategic innovation, governance, competitive advantage, and trust in increasingly digital societies. With the rise of new data architectures (e.g., data meshes and data lakehouses), the shift from centralized to decentralized systems, and the integration of AI in data governance and management among others emerging technologies (e.g., blockchain, cloud computing), these ecosystems are becoming more dynamic, interconnected, and complex. However, alongside their potential benefits that is a common focus of the research around these ecosystems, challenges related to trustworthiness, transparency, security, sustainability, and governance must be addressed.

HICSS2026 “Sustainable and Trustworthy Digital and Data Ecosystems for Societal Transformation” mini-track we chair together with Daniel Staegemann and Asif Gill invites research on how digital and data ecosystems evolve in terms of resilience, trustworthiness, and sustainability while enabling strategic innovation and societal transformation. We welcome studies that explore the interplay between AI, data governance, policies, methodologies, human factors, and digital transformation across sectors such as finance, government, healthcare, and education.
We seek theoretical, empirical, design science, case study, and interdisciplinary contributions on topics including, but not limited to:

  1. AI, trustworthiness, and governance in digital and data ecosystems:
    • AI as an actor and stakeholder in data ecosystems;
    • AI-augmented governance, security, and data quality management;
    • human factors in AI-integrated ecosystems (trust, user acceptance, participation);
    • interoperability, observability, and data linking across ecosystems;
  2. Emerging technologies and strategic innovation:
    • transition from centralized to decentralized data architectures (e.g., data lakehouses, data meshes);
    • emerging technologies for trustworthy ecosystems;
    • AI-driven business process augmentation and decision-making;
    • industry and government case studies on evolving data ecosystems;
  3. Resilience and sustainability of data ecosystems:
    • ethical AI and responsible innovation in data ecosystems;
    • sustainability and long-term governance of digital and data infrastructures;
    • cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary approaches for building sustainable ecosystems;
    • impact of data democratization on digital transformation and innovation.

By combining the strengths of strategic innovation, trustworthy AI, and data ecosystem governance, this track expects to offer a holistic perspective at the intersection of information systems, AI governance, data science, and digital transformation. It will serve as a platform for researchers and practitioners to explore how digital and data ecosystems can be sustainable, resilient, and trustworthy while driving innovation and societal transformation.

We welcome conceptual, empirical, design science, case study, and theoretical papers from fields such as information systems, computer science, data science, management and process science, policy-making, behavioral economics, and social sciences.

This mini-track is part of HICSS59 “Organizational Systems and Technology” track (chairs: Hugh Watson and Dorothy Leidner) and more information about it can be found here.

Wrapping up 2024!🍾🥂🎇

Anastasija Nikiforova Leave a comment

It is already a good tradition at the end of the year to take a moment and wrap up the year, thus reminding myself of what was actually done, thus explaining to myself that maybe I am not as lazy as I think. However, in this post I would like to rather thank those colleagues who were with me in this. As such, let me very briefly summarize what happened (or rather with whom) and what to come in the first months of next year with the later to be spotlighted by me early next year accordingly.

This year I had the opportunity to share my experience, but more importantly, learn from others by participating in panels or plenary sessions, some of which stood out as generating some of the liveliest discussions during and after the events:

  • “Citizen urban data and smart metropolis monitoring” together with Jaewon Peter Chun (President of World Smart Cities Forum), Redouane El Haloui (President of APEBI Fédération des technologies d’information de télécommunication et de l’offshoring), Mahdi Barouni (The World Bank), Khouloud Abejja (Digital Transformation Director, Agence de Développement du Digital-ADD), Youssef El Maddarsi (CEO Naoris Consulting) that held as part of a Casablanca Smart City event (read a bit more here);
  • panel on Trust in AI together with Nicolas Cruz B., Korbinian Bösl, and Anamika Chatterjee as part of the Digital Life Norway conference oganized by Centre for Digital Life Norway (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)), with my big thanks to Elisabeth Hyldbakk, Ingrid Shields, Kam Sripada, and many more colleagues for hospitality;
  • “Sociotechnical Transformation in the Decade of Healthy Ageing to empower the Silver Economy: Bridging the Silver Divide through Social and Digital Inclusion” with Hsien-Lee Tseng, Chin-Chien Jao, Azmat Butt, Dirk Draheim, Li-chuan Liu as part of 25th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2024) (read a bit more here)

To continue on discussions around research that I truly enjoyed, several conferences or tracks to which I served as one of organizers to be highlighted with credits to go to my colleagues, namely:

Selected papers from DGO2024 and EGOV2024 were invited to the “Towards sustainable public and open data ecosystems” Special Section with Information Polity, which we successfully a few weeks ago with the very last preparations before we can announce its final version – big thanks to both co-editors – Anthony, Pedro, and Anneke, as well as Albert Meijer, Kim Willems, William Webster, who supported us in the process, and the authors – Mohsan Ali, Georgios Papageorgiou, Abdul Aziz, Euripidis Loukis, Yannis Charalabidis, Charalampos Alexopoulos, and Francisco Javier López Pellicer, Alejandra Vargas, Rikke Magnussen, Birger Larsen, and Ingrid Mulder and Hsien-Lee Tseng. Stay tuned for the information about this Section!

Together with Jérôme Chenal, Stéphane C. K. Tekouabou and El Arbi Allaoui Abdellaoui we almost finalized our “Emerging Data- and Policy-driven Approaches for African Cities Challenges” Special Issue with Cambridge Press Data & Policy journal – again, stay tuned!

While the two above are those we are ready with, there is another very special issue we have together with Asif Gill, Ina Sebastian, Martin Lněnička and Anushri Gupta and tremendous assistance of Katina Michael – Special Issue “Trustworthy Data Ecosystems for Digital Societies” with IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society (read a bit more here) and we look forward your submission by 30 June 2025 very much!

And of course, several conferences where I shared my own research, gathering feedback and inspiration for future research, with brightest moments coming from The 25th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (DGO2024) (read a bit more here), and big thanks to my personal host Hsien-Lee Tseng, EGOV2024 and my special hosts Cesar Casiano Flores & Caterina Santoro, 27th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2024) (read a bit more here), International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2024) (a bit more here), and several more, where I was fortunate this year to not only present my own research but also introduce my students to the community. Some of these conference papers have already expanded into journal papers, with some exciting news to share early next year!

I am also very grateful to my colleagues for their invitations to join the International Journal of Information Management (IJIM, Elsevier) and Government Information Quarterly (GIQ) Editorial Boards, Communication Committee at Digital Government Society (and one of its Chapter on which I will post later, similar to several other recent updates), and European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) FAIR Metrics and Digital Objects task force, which is rather continuation of the TF I participated in the past (“FAIR Metrics and Data Quality”).

On a slightly different note, similar to previous years, I continued delivering some courses and lectures to other universities, such as:

I am also grateful for several recognitions I have received this year (e.g., being named the best reviewer for a journal, or called to be “the top 2% of scientists“ for the second year in a row (Stanford Elsevier Top Scientists List) and top 0.5% of all scholars worldwide (0.2% in Government specialty) by SholarGPS), but probably the proudest moment for every academic is the success of our students, and as such, I want to especially mention Kevin Kliimask, whose thesis recognized by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of Estonia at the annual Open Data Forum (Avaandmete foorum) as the best thesis of the year 🏆 🥇 🏅 (read a bit more here).

I also want to acknowledge achievements of others – this year I witnessed 3 PhD defenses and would like to congratulate Eric Jackson, Richard Dreiling and Lisa Miasayedava again, especially for such insightful discussions – I know I am quite a tough person to have in the committee (esp. as opponent – sorry Liza and Eric), but you all did a great job and I really enjoyed our discussions!

And I will skip the part about published conference and journal papers, as well as submitted project proposals and those currently in development.  Instead, some disclaimer about what is to come, with some posting at later point:

  • in the very first weeks of January, meet my very good colleagues– Anthony and Nicolas – at HICSS presenting our paper “Artificial Intelligence as a Catalyzer for Open Government Data Ecosystems: A Typological Theory Approach”, which has been already spotlighted several times, including by The Living Library, whose main goal is to identify the “signal in the noise”
  • keep an eye open for several conferences for which together with colleagues of mine we organize (mini-) tracks, with probably the most important for me at the moment:
  • AMCIS mini-track Sustainable Digital and Data Ecosystems – Navigating the Age of AI;
  • DGO2025 – “Sustainable Public and Open Data Ecosystems for Inclusive and Innovative Digital Government” track we continue with Anthony Simonofski, Anneke Zuiderwijk;
  • EGOV2025 – Emerging Issues and Innovations Track – we continue in the updated form welcoming Paula Rodriguez Muller who will be joining me and Francesco Murredu!
  • And for Data for Policy CIC, we will slightly change the role we played the last year, and together with Sarah Giest, Bram Klievnik Iryna Susha, Florin Coman Kund, Leid Zejnilovic Laura, we are very excited to invite you to the Data for Policy CIC 2025 Conference (Leiden University, The Hague, Netherlands 🇳🇱) for which we serve as Regional Conference Committee
  • Finally, do meet me at European Open Data Days 2025 in March to discuss recent (and future) advances in the world of open data with me sharing insights on how Artificial Intelligence can serve as a catalyst for transforming public and open data ecosystems, exploring the various AI roles at data, portal and ecosystem levels driving innovation, enhancing governance, and boosting citizen engagement;
  • and meet me as a keynote for the International Conference on Innovative Approaches and Applications for Sustainable Development (I2ASD) in April with more details to come!

This is rather a very short list of the events and people I wanted to emphasize, and my apologizes if I missed someone (and I definitely missed). All in all, it was a busy and eventful year,  – really grateful for all the opportunities it brought to me and lessons (both positive and negative, rather willing to have positive ones only though) and people I met. I really hope that the next year will be even better. And in this regard, I wish us all a peaceful, joyful and productive year!

Thank 2024 and bye! Welcome 2025! Happy 2025!