Last month, we officially launched the Green AI Challenge, part of the Horizon Europe ENFIELD – AI Network of Excellence, and October saw a major step forward during an intensive research visit to the Know Center in Graz (Austria) —a hub of AI research and cross-sector collaboration. Working alongside Nicki Lisa Cole we advanced the conceptual and methodological foundations of our Green AI initiative, merging complementary perspectives into a promising framework for sustainable AI.
Why Green AI matters
AI is accelerating rapidly, but so are its environmental and societal side-effects – rising compute demands, energy-intensive models, and the broader ecological footprint of scaling AI. Policies, incentives, and institutional capacity are often lagging behind, creating a gap between AI adoption and responsible, sustainable practice.
The Green AI Challenge aims to understand how organizations across Europe approach Green AI, identifying struggles, gaps, and opportunities, and ultimately co-creating a validated framework for adoption that informs both policy and governance.
Community Call
We need insights from anyone working in AI, sustainability, digital transformation, public policy, or tech governance:
What perspectives on Green AI feel most critical today?
Where are the biggest gaps, risks, or untapped opportunities?
Examples of Green AI in practice (good or bad)?
Recommendations for interviews, readings, or collaborators?
Frameworks, metrics, or research to guide our work?
Your input will directly shape policy recommendations and adoption frameworks for a more sustainable, trustworthy AI future. Comment below or message us to contribute. Let’s choose the Green Pill together, as we also did with those who joined us earlier in October as part of ECAI2025 Green AI workshop.
Earlier last month, as part of the 28th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI2025) in Bologna, together with Riccardo Cantini, Luca Ferragina, Davide Mario Longo, Simona Nisticò, Francesco Scarcello, Reza Shahbazian, Dipanwita Thakur, Irina Trubitsyna, and Giovanna Varricchio, we organized a workshop on environmentally responsible AI, where across three thematic tracks of Sustainability, Green AI, and Applications, 17 talks exploring pathways toward sustainable AI practice were delivered, with the special highlight of keynote talk delivered by Thomas Eiter on “The Bilateral AI approach for Green and Sustainable AI,” introducing a framework that integrates symbolic and subsymbolic methods to advance more efficient and Ecologically Responsible AI.
🌱 All in all, the path forward is ours to shape. By working together—researchers, policymakers, and practitioners—we can turn Green AI from a vision into practice. Let’s continue this journey being committed to sustainable, responsible AI. Let’s choose the Green Pill, together. 🟢
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;
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:
Data for Policy 2024 “Digital & Data-Driven Transformation in Governance” track with Sarah Giest, Sharique Manazir, Keegan McBride, Francesco Mureddu, Sujit Sikder (a bit more here)
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!
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:
and several more events, including some local ones we organized for our current and prospective PhD students at the Institute of Tartu – hope to see all attendees with us!
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:
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!
As the year comes to an end, so does the 45th edition of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS2024) —a conference filled with presentations, countless chats with old colleagues and friends and meeting new ones, and a tons of emotions coming from a warm Bangkok 🇹🇭
This year the conference held under theme “Digital Platforms for Emerging Societies” aimed at examining the expansive role of information technology in driving economic and societal transformation across the globe. Over 1.7K participants from 49 countries attended ICIS2024 this year, incl. Estonia 🇪🇪 – the only country of the Baltics – represented by both TalTech (Tallinn University of Technology) and finally University of Tartu (with me trying to bring the name of Latvia 🇱🇻 as well), in total accounting only three people – Mari-Klara Stein, myself and my PhD student – Dimitris Symeonidis, which is, however, a significant increase compared to previous editions, which is smth we – Mari-Klara and myself – are still not too happy about, as we still remain “rarities,” as I’ve been called several times, and will try to change that 👩🔬
The conference started for me with pre-ICIS Symposium SIGDSA (Special Interest Group on Decision Support and Analytics), which this year run under the “Emerging AI Platforms for Societal Good” theme, which was an action-packed day featuring a keynote by Apirak Kosayodhin (Former Governor of Bangkok), followed by a panel on the role of AI across society, business & academia, with Ofir T., discussing whether Artificial Intelligence, and GenAI in particular, is a “friend or foe” reflecting on our evolving attitudes toward it (through the lenses of other phenomenon, incl. dogs & how our attitudes towards them changed over centuries), Borworn Papasratorn addressing challenges of diffusing & adopting AI in Thai Higher Education Institutions, Kriengkrai Boonlert-U-Thai discussing the role of information technology in driving economic & societal transformation, moderated by Ramesh Sharda.
And as a follow-up to this, the paper of my former master student Jan-Erik Kalmus – “Generative AI adoption in higher education: exploring educator resistance in Estonian universities” was presented. In this study, Jan-Erik examined educator resistance to student use of GenAI in higher education focusing on Estonia, known as a “digital nation”, employing a theoretical model informed by the Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) that we introduced in previous study presented at ECAI (on which I posted earlier).
It was continued with 7 hours of vibrant dialogue on digital government research as part of the pre-ICIS workshop on eGovernment, including: ✅the first ever study results of my 1st year PhD student – Dimitris Symeonidis – presented (“Reimagining Digital Government: a step towards Blockchain-Enabled Public Data Ecosystems”) ✅a concept of what we call Data Satellites introduced by Asif Gill as part of our “Towards a Data Satellite Architecture for Digital Government Ecosystems” study, in which we call for a data observability level missing in the current data ecosystems, thereby providing zero opportunities to get rid off or at least be informed about dark and toxic data (while the concept name might evolve based on community feedback, whereas happy that the concept itself found an acceptance with community, what we hoped for) ✅and 5 more super interesting studies by colleagues exploring digital transformation, AI in public administration (incl. framework to determine when AI is truly needed (i.e., smth close to the idea of automation as a default and the only in business process redesign – just don’t!), AI literacy, GenAI for citizen engagement), smart cities, and a methodological proposal for a soft digital ecosystem methodology for hybrid cities’ problem design 🎙️all of this masterfully moderated by Rony Medaglia – president of the current SIG-eGov, and tons of discussions around every study and the filed in general, incl. the future plans.
Finally, my first-year PhD student introduced himself to the IS community at probably the most prestigious IS conference, with yet another paper presented at the SIG SVC – AIS Special Interest Group for Services Workshop on Synergizing Service Ecosystems – “Integrating Generative AI with Public Data Ecosystems: Enhancing Decision Making and Efficiency in the Service Industry of the Private Sector”.
All in all, with four papers presented at three ICIS workshops & symposium, this was a very rich week, for which – a heartfelt thanks to the organizers!
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.
This October, I had an opportunity to participate in the panel on Trust in AI that took place as part of Digital Life Norway conference organized by Centre for Digital Life Norway (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)) that took place in a very peaceful Hurdal (Norway) 🇳🇴🇳🇴🇳🇴.
As part of this panel, together with M. Nicolas Cruz B. (KIWI-biolab), Korbinian Bösl (ELIXIR, both of us being also part of EOSC Association)), and Anamika Chatterjee (Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)), who masterly chaired this discussion, we discussed trust in AI and data (as an integral part of it), emphasizing the need for transparency, reproducibility, and responsibility in managing them.
What made this discussion to be rather insightful – for ourselves, and, hopefully, for the audience as well – is that each of us represented a distinct stage in the data lifecycle debated upon the aspect of trust and where concerns arise as data moves from the lab to inform AI tools [in biotechnology]. As such we: ✅highlighted the interconnectedness of human actors involved in data production, governance, and application; ✅highlighted the importance of proper documentation to make data usable and trustworthy, along with the need for transparency – not only for data but also for AI in general, incl. explainable AI; ✅discussed how responsibility becomes blurred as AI-driven methodologies become more prevalent, agreeing that responsibility for AI systems must be shared across teams. Lastly, despite being openness advocate, I used this opportunity to touch on the risks of open data, including the potential for misuse and ethical concerns, esp. when it comes to medical- and biotechnologies-related topics.
All in all, although rather short discussion with some more things we would love to cover but were forced to omit this time, but very lively and insightful. Sounds interesting? Watch the video, incl. keynote by Nico Cruz 👇.
And not of least interest was a diverse set of other events – keynotes, panels, posters etc. – takeaways from which to take back home (not really to home, as from the DNL, I went to the Estonian Open Data Forum, from which to ECAI, and then, finally back home to digest all the insights), where “Storytelling: is controversy good? How to pitch your research to a non-academic audience” by Kam Sripada and panel on supervision are probably the main things I take with me.
Many thanks go organizers for having me and the hospitality, where the later also goes to Hurdal 🇳🇴 in general, as we were lucky enough to have a very sunny weather, which made this very first trip to Norway – and, hopefully, not the last one – very pleasant!
Anastasija Nikiforova, PhD 