Are you focusing on new topics emerging in the field of ICT and public sector, incl. public-private ecosystems? Then it is time to start preparing your submission for EGOV2023 – IFIP EGOV-CeDEM-EPART Emerging Issues and Innovations Track (chairs: Anastasija Nikiforova, Marijn Janssen, Francesco Mureddu).

EGOV2023 – IFIP EGOV-CeDEM-EPART is one of the most recognized conference in e-Government, ICT and public administration and related topics, which this year will be hosted in Belgium, in the heart of Europe, by Ghent University and KU Leuven – both top 100 universities.

 Innovation and application of emerging technologies is now more and more in the thinking of Governments at all levels. While it would be easy to consider the public sector as being less flexible or slow in adoption, presentations at recent EGOV-CeDEM-ePart conferences proved that one should not come to such a conclusion too easily. Upcoming technologies, innovative organizational solutions, or new avenues of involvement in public sector activities seem to be more commonplace – along with the potential issues and challenges that come with such endeavours. Policy-makers and public sector officials are now expected to embrace change, consider digital transformation, or improve governance practices. At the same time, public sector researchers are also influenced by new views, methods, tools and techniques.

🎯The goal of this track is to provide a platform for the discussion of new ideas, issues, problems, and solutions, that keep entering the public sphere. Ideas that are emerging but might not fit other conference tracks are also welcome. Focus may include but is not limited to:

• 💡 Looking ahead into social innovation
• 💡Future studies, the future of government, policy-making and democracy
• 💡New trends in public sector research such as Metaverse, Large Language Models (LLMs), generative AI and its implementations such as chatGPT, Claude, ChatSonic, Poe – benefits, risks, adoption and resistance to its adoption by the public sector and citizens;
• 💡Global challenges that go beyond nation states (such as migration, climate change etc.) and which require international collaboration of individual governments;
• 💡Digital transformation in public sector context;
• 💡The future of digital governance;
• 💡Public values in transforming the government;
• 💡The role of government in smart cities (incl. smart sustainable cities) and sustainable living;
• 💡The role of the public sector in Human-Centered Society known as Society 5.0;
• 💡Government in the metaverse;
• 💡Self-Service Structures for Inclusion;
• 💡Public-private sector collaboration and integration;
• 💡Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), smart contracts and blockchain;
• 💡Preparing for the policy challenges of future technologies;
• 💡Regulating misinformation;
• 💡New technologies for automated decision-making;
• 💡The future public sector use and regulation of latest AI or genAI solutions;
• 💡Public use as well as regulations of industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 and the Internet of Things (IoT);
• 💡The relationships of governments and Fintech;
• 💡Upcoming issues of eVoting / internet voting including application of digital signatures in the public sector;
• 💡Online public community building;
• 💡Utilization of digital billboards;
• 💡Latest trends in co-creation and service delivery;
• 💡Discussion of new research methods that have not been applied in this context;
• 💡Application of role theory in the analysis of public sector functions and processes;
• 💡Forward looking insights from case studies – let it be successful or failed experiments.

Track Chairs

• Anastasija Nikiforova, Tartu University, Estonia
• Marijn Janssen, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
• Francesco Mureddu, The Lisbon Council, Belgium

This time International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) EGOV-CeDEM-EPART will be hosted by KU Leuven and Ghent University, September 2024, while the deadline for submitting your paper is set to March, 2024.

Stay tuned, more info to come!