Recently, the United Nations University announced the launch of the United Nations University EGOV’s repository platform – a centralized hub of specialized repositories tackling global challenges, which is dedicated to two topics – EGOV for Emergencies that provides a set of content on innovations in digital governance for emergency response, and Data for EGOVis the repository intended “to supports policymakers, decision-makers, researchers, and the community interested in digitally transforming the public sector through emerging technologies and data. The repository combines diverse academic documents, use cases, rankings, best practices, standards, benchmarking, portals, datasets, and pilot projects to support open data, quality and purpose of open data, application of data techniques analytics in the public sector, and making cities smarter. This repository results from the “INOV.EGOV-Digital Governance Innovation for Inclusive, Resilient and Sustainable Societies” project on the role of open data and data science technologies in the digital transformation of State and Public Administration institutions“. The latter, recommends 286 reading materials (reports, articles, standards etc.) I find to be very relevant for the above described, and highly recommend to surf through. However, what made me specially happy while browsing this collection, is the fact that five of these reading materials are articles (co-)authored by me. Therefore, considering that not always I keep track of what I conducted in past, let me use this opportunity to reflect on those studies, in case you had not came across them previously, as well as to refresh mine memories (some of them dated back to times, when I worked on my PhD thesis).
By the way, every article is accompanied with tags that enrich keywords by which that article was described by authors, with a particular attention being paid to main topics, incl. “data analytics”, “smart city”, “open data”, “sustainability” etc., where for “the latter”sustainability”, tagging based on the compliance with a specific Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) takes place, thereby allowing to filter out relevant articles by a specific SDG or find out what SDG does your article contributes, where although while conducting research I kept in mind some of those I find my research more suited with, for one of them (the last one in the list) I was pretty surprised to see that it is very SDGs-compliant, being compliant with 11 SDGs (SDG-2, SDG-3, SDG-6, SDG-7, SDG-9, SDG-11, SDG-13, SDG-14, SDG-15).
So, back to those studies that the United Nations University recommends…
A multi-perspective knowledge-driven approach for analysis of the demand side of the Open Government Data portal, which proposes a multi-perspective approach where an OGD portal is analyzed from (1) citizens’ perspective, (2) users’ perspective, (3) experts’ perspective, and (4) state of the art. By considering these perspectives, we can define how to improve the portal in question by focusing on its demand side. In view of the complexity of the analysis, we look for ways to simplify it by reusing data and knowledge on the subject, thereby proposing a knowledge-driven analysis that supports the idea under OGD – their reuse. Latvian open data portal is used as an example demonstrating how this analysis should be carried out, validating the proposed approach at the same time. We are aiming to find (1) the level of the citizens’ awareness of the portal existence and its quality by means of the simple survey, (2) the key challenges that may negatively affect users’ experience identified in the course of the usability analysis carried out by both users and experts, (3) combine these results with those already known from the external sources. These data serve as an input, while the output is the assessment of the current situation allowing defining corrective actions. Since the debates on the Latvian OGD portal serving as the use-case appear more frequently, this study also brings significant benefit at national level.
Transparency of open data ecosystems in smart cities: Definition and assessment of the maturity of transparency in 22 smart cities, which focuses on the issue of the transparency maturity of open data ecosystems seen as the key for the development and maintenance of sustainable, citizen-centered, and socially resilient smart cities. This study inspects smart cities’ data portals and assesses their compliance with transparency requirements for open (government) data. The expert assessment of 34 portals representing 22 smart cities, with 36 features, allowed us to rank them and determine their level of transparency maturity according to four predefined levels of maturity – developing, defined, managed, and integrated. In addition, recommendations for identifying and improving the current maturity level and specific features have been provided. An open data ecosystem in the smart city context has been conceptualized, and its key components were determined. Our definition considers the components of the data-centric and data-driven infrastructure using the systems theory approach. We have defined five predominant types of current open data ecosystems based on prevailing data infrastructure components. The results of this study should contribute to the improvement of current data ecosystems and build sustainable, transparent, citizen-centered, and socially resilient open data-driven smart cities.
Smarter open government data for society 5.0: Are your open data smart enough? in which, considering the fact that the open (government) data initiative as well as users’ intent for open (government) data are changing continuously and today, in line with IoT and smart city trends, real-time data and sensor-generated data have higher interest for users that are considered to be one of the crucial drivers for the sustainable economy, and might have an impact on ICT innovation and become a creativity bridge in developing a new ecosystem in Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0, the paper examines 51 OGD portals on the presence of the relevant data and their suitability for further reuse, by analyzing their machine-readability, currency or frequency of updates, the ability to submit request/comment/complaint/suggestion and their visibility to other users, and the ability to assess the value of these data assessed by others, i.e., rating, reuse, comments, etc., which is usually considered to be a very time-consuming and complex task, and therefore rarely conducted. The analysis leads to the conclusion that although many OGD portals and data publishers are working hard to make open data a useful tool moving towards Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0, many portals do not even respect the principles of open data, such as machine-readability. Moreover, according to the lists of most competitive countries by topic, there are no leaders who provide their users with excellent data and service, therefore there is room for improvements for all portals. The paper shows that open data, particularly those published and updated in time, are provided in machine-readable format and support to their users, attract audience interest and are used to develop solutions that benefit the entire society (the case in France, Spain, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Austria, Switzerland, etc.). Thus, the publication of open data should be done not only because it is a modern trend, but also because it incentivizes scientists, researchers and enthusiasts to reuse the data by transforming it into knowledge and value, providing solutions, improving the world, and moving towards Society 5.0 or the super smart society.
Definition and evaluation of data quality: User-oriented data object-driven approach to data quality assessmentproposes a data object-driven approach to data quality evaluation. This user-oriented solution is based on 3 main components: data object, data quality specification and the process of data quality measuring. These components are defined by 3 graphical DSLs, that are easy enough even for non-IT experts. The approach ensures data quality analysis depending on the use-case. Developed approach allows analysing quality of “third-party” data. The proposed solution is applied to open data sets. The result of approbation of the proposed approach demonstrated that open data have numerous data quality issues. There are also underlined common data quality problems detected not only in Latvian open data but also in open data of 3 European countries – Estonia, Norway, the United Kingdom. I.e., none of the very simple or intuitive and even obvious use cases in which the values of the primary parameters were analysed were satisfied by any Company Register. However, the Estonian and Norwegian Registers can be used to identify any company by its name and registration number, since only they have passed quality checks of the relevant fields.
Open Data Hackathon as a Tool for Increased Engagement of Generation Z: To Hack or Not to Hack? examines the role of open data hackathons, known as a form of civic innovation in which participants representing citizens can point out existing problems or social needs and propose a solution, in OGD initiative. Given the high social, technical, and economic potential of open government data (OGD), the concept of open data hackathons is becoming popular around the world. This concept has become popular in Latvia with the annual hackathons organised for a specific cluster of citizens – Generation Z. Contrary to the general opinion, the organizer suggests that the main goal of open data hackathons to raise an awareness of OGD has been achieved, and there has been a debate about the need to continue them. This study presents the latest findings on the role of open data hackathons and the benefits that they can bring to both the society, participants, and government. First, a systematic literature review is carried out to establish a knowledge base. Then, empirical research of 4 case studies of open data hackathons for Generation Z participants held between 2018 and 2021 in Latvia is conducted to understand which ideas dominated and what were the main results of these events for the OGD initiative. It demonstrates that, despite the widespread belief that young people are indifferent to current societal and natural problems, the ideas developed correspond to current situation and are aimed at solving them, revealing aspects for improvement in both the provision of data, infrastructure, culture, and government- related areas.
More to come, and let’s keep track of updates in this repository! Do not also to check other works in both the repository, as well as more work of mine you can find here.
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:
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”):
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
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
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)
“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!
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…)
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:
“Sustainable Public and Open Data Ecosystems” track we (chairs: Anastasija Nikiforova, Anthony Simonofski, Anneke Zuiderwijk & Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar) launched as part of the Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o2024) and awaits your submissions (read more here);
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!
25th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o2024)is coming with the revised list of tracks, where the special attention I invite you to draw to is a new track “Sustainable Public and Open Data Ecosystems” (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… 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 (Nikiforova, 2021, Nikiforova et al., 2023). 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 (Lnenicka et al., 2021). The body of knowledge in the above areas (not to say about putting them all together) is very limited. 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.
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;
💡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;
💡Case studies of Public and Open 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 in line with the conference theme of DGO 2024, namely: Internet of Beings – Transforming Public Governance, where, “the Internet of Beings focuses on digital technologies that enable integration, people-centric, and creation of open platforms for collaborative multi-user to co-create services and products” (as mentioned in the theme description). Public and open data ecosystems can be considered as such open platforms, where data providers and data users find each other and collaborate and co-create to develop services and products useful for society. While digital technologies enable the development of public and open data ecosystems, the adoption of such ecosystems has been fragmented.
Is your research related to any of the above topics? Then do not wait – submit!
🗓️🗓️🗓️Important Dates:
January 26, 2024: Papers, workshops, tutorials, and panels are due Feb 1, 2021: Application deadline for doctoral colloquium March 8, 2024: Author notifications (papers, workshops, tutorials, panels)
It was a hard work, especially for the editors of the book, who indeed did a great job in adapting to the situation and taking care of us – authors – as much as possible! Kudos!
So, almost traditionally a few words about the content or “what is it about?“. Today we all know that open data and open government data are characterized by a number of economic, environmental, technological, innovative, and social benefits. They are seen as a significant contributor to the city’s transformation into smart city. This is all the more so when the society is on the border of Society 5.0, that is, shift from the Information Society (Society 4.0) to a “super smart society” or “society of imagination” (Society 5.0) takes place. However, the question constantly asked by open data experts is, what are the key factors to be met and satisfied in order to achieve promised benefits?The current trend of openness suggests that the principle of openness should be followed not only by data but also research, education, software, standard, hardware, etc., it should become a philosophy to be followed at different levels, in different domains. This should ensure greater transparency, eliminating inequalities, promoting, and achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs). I.e., the openness in both, data, science, technology (software or hardware) is considered as one of the keys for meeting SDGs, while supporting some of them “by default” simultaneously (general principles of open data covered by Open Data Charter applicable to all data to perceive and treat it as open data) and domain, which the open data represents. This was also emphasized at the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, highlighting that the openness contributes to the attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, many agendas (sustainable development strategies, action plans) now have openness as a prerequisite. This chapter deals with concepts of open (government) data and Society 5.0 pointing to their interconnection, i.e., common objectives, providing some success stories of open data use in smart cities or transformation of cities toward smart cities, mapping them to the features of the Society 5.0. We believe that this trend develops a new form of society, which we refer to as “open data-driven society.” It forms a bridge from Society 4.0 to Society 5.0. This chapter attempts to identify the role of openness in promoting human-centric smart society, smart city, and smart living, incl. identifying and elaborating on both determinants or prerequisites capable of promoting the development of the Society 5.0 by means of open data and barriers, which stakeholders of different types may face on the way towards sustainable smart city and super smart society
Sounds catchy? Hope so! If yes, read the chapter here or find its preprint here.
Citation
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
On behalf of the co-chair of “Emerging issues and innovations” track I sincerely invite everyone whose research focuses on new topics emerging in the field of ICT and public sector, including public-private ecosystems, to submit their work to this track, which is part of EGOV2023 – IFIP EGOV-CeDEM-EPART – one of the most recognized conference in e-Government, ICT and public administration and related topics!
The annual IFIP EGOV2023 will be hosted 5-7 September 2023 in Budapest by the Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. The conference focuses on e-Government, Digital Government, Open Government, Smart Government, GovTech, eParticipation and e-Democracy, and related topics like social media, digital transformation, Digital society, artificial intelligence, policy information, policy informatics, smart cities, and social innovation. Several types of submissions are possible, including completed research, ongoing research, reflections & viewpoints, posters, and workshops. The conference consists of 10 tracks:
General E-Government and E-Governance Track
General e-Democracy & e-Participation track
ICT and Sustainable Development Goals Track
Digital Society Track
AI, Data Analytics & Automated Decision Making Track
And while the conference consists of 10 tracks you will definitely find relevant, my personal recommendation is “Emerging issues and innovations” track (chairs: Marijn Janssen, Anastasija Nikiforova, Dr. Csaba Csaki, Francesco Mureddu).
🎯🎯🎯 “Emerging issues and innovations” track focuses on new topics emerging in the field of ICT and public sector, including public-private ecosystems. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: 💡Looking ahead into Social innovation 💡The future of government, policy making and democracy 💡Global challenges that go beyond nation states (such as migration, climate change etc.) and 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 eCities and sustainable living 💡The role of the public sector in Human Centered Society 💡Self Service Structures for Inclusion 💡Public-private sector collaboration and integration; 💡Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), 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 solutions; 💡Public use as well as regulations of industry 4.0 and the internet of things 💡The relationships of governments and Fintech 💡Upcoming issues of eVoting 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 💡Forward looking insights from case studies – let it be successful or failed experiments.
🗓️🗓️🗓️ IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2023 PhD Colloquium deadline for submissions: 1 May 2023 Poster submission deadline: 20 May 2023 PhD Colloquium: 4 September 2023 Conference: 5-7 September 2023
Do not miss 3 days of discussions around e-Government, Digital Government, Open Government, Smart Government, GovTech, eParticipation and e-Democracy, and related topics like social media, digital transformation, Digital society, artificial intelligence, policy information, policy informatics, smart cities, and social innovation. Mark your calendar – 31 March 2023 for submitting your paper, and 5-7 September 2023 for attending the conference!
The conference is organized by the IFIP 8.5 Working group (WG8.5) and the Digital Government Society (DGS). The aim of WG 8.5 is to improve the quality of e-government information systems at international, national, regional and local levels. The WG8.5 emphasis is on interdisciplinary approaches for information systems in public administration. DGS is a global, multi-disciplinary organization of scholars and practitioners interested in the development and impacts of digital government. Read more here.
Anastasija Nikiforova, PhD 