Publications

Special Issue of Government Information Quarterly with selected papers submitted to the 5^th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, ICEGOV2010, Beijing, China, October 2010, focusing on Government Information Networks. 

Facing economic pressure, social tensions, global competition and low public confidence, governments can no longer afford to address increasingly complex and interdependent public goals alone or step back and rely on the markets. Instead, they have to work through networks of state and non-state actors to organize existing resources, knowledge and capabilities in the pursuit of public goals. The new paradigm increasingly relies on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to connect actors to the network and to build, manage and sustain relationships between them. We refer to such ICT-enabled networks as Government Information Networks. This article serves as an introduction to the current issue of Government Information Quarterly on Government Information Networks. The issue comprises twelve cases of such networks selected from the papers submitted to the 5^th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, ICEGOV2010, held in Beijing, China in October 2010. The article also presents a conceptual framework for public administration networks, and applies the framework to describe, analyze and compare the cases, thus relating the volume to the Public Administration literature.

This document presents the mini-track on Development Methods for Electronic Government, organized for the third time under the Electronic Government Track at HICSS - Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. The document introduces the rationale and the papers presented as part of the mini-track.

This paper presents a Minitrack on Development Methods for Electronic Government, organized as part of the Electronic Government Track at HICCS43 - 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-43), 5-8 January 2010, Koloa, Hawaii. The minitrack focused on development methods, including technical, managerial and organizational dimensions, to address various challenges facing Electronic Government development: dependability and accessibility, evolving requirements, adherence to law and regulations, multi-channel service delivery, technical and organizational complexity, dependence on ever-changing legal and operational environments, etc. Of particular interest are contributions that can make Electronic Government development more measurable, predictable, replicable and scalable, contributing to the establishment of theoretical foundations and engineering practices for the domain.

The six papers accepted by the Minitrack were: (1) “A Goal Oriented and Knowledge Based e-Government Project Management Platform” by Demetrios Sarantis, Yannis Charalabidis and Dimitris Askounis; (2) “Simulation Games for the Collaborative Development of Multichannel Public Service Delivery” by Bram Klievink and Marijn Janssen; (3) “Can e-Government Adopters Benefit from a Technology-First Approach? The Case of Egypt Embarking on Service-Oriented Architecture” by Ralf Klischewski and Ranwa Abubakr; (4) “EA as a Tool for Strategic Planning – a Case Study of a Local Government” by Katariina Valtonen, Ismo Korhonen and Riku Rekonen; (5) “On Mapping Business Document Models to Core Components” by Michael Strommer, Christian Pichler and Philipp Liegl; and (6) “Semantic Interoperability in Practice” by Aadya Shukla, Steve Harris and Jim Davies.

The 3rd International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, ICEGOV2009, was organized in Bogota, Colombia during 10-13 November 2009. The conference took place under the patronage of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Government of Colombia, and was co-organized by: (1) Electronic Governance Programme at United Nations University - International Institute for Software Technology, (2) Observatorio de Sociedad, Gobierno y Tecnologías de Información, Universidad Externado de Colombia, and (3) Programa Gobierno en Línea, Government of Colombia.

The ICEGOV conference series focuses on the use of technology to transform relationships between government and its customers – citizens, businesses, civil society and other arms of government (Electronic Governance), beyond the traditional focus on technology-enabled transformation within government (Electronic Government). After the first two editions – ICEGOV2007 in Macao and ICEGOV2008 in Cairo, ICEGOV2009 helped to further strengthen the features of the ICEGOV conference series as global, multi-stakeholder, networking, research and practice, capacity building, development and UN conferences. Notably, the conference enjoyed a strong representation from developing and transition countries, with contributions to research and practice of Electronic Governance, and offered a strong capacity- and network-building program with invited talks, invited sessions, tutorials, workshops, panel discussions, round-table discussions, papers sessions, and the demo and poster session. For the first time, the conference featured invited sessions to present experiences and lessons learnt in Electronic Governance development by various government organizations responsible for such development at the national or sub-national levels, as well as three round-table discussions aimed at consensus-building.

ICEGOV2009 benefited from invited talks by three distinguished experts and practitioners in the area: (1) Her Excellency Ms. María del Rosario Guerra, Minister of Information and Communication Technology, Government of Colombia - government perspective, (2) Prof. Matthias Finger, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland - academic perspective, and (3) Dr. Saleem Zoughbi, Regional Advisor, Information and Communication Technology, United Nations Social and Economic Commission for Western Asia, Lebanon - international perspective. The talks took place on 11, 10 and 13 November 2009 respectively.

ICEGOV2009 also featured 12 invited sessions to present experiences and lessons learnt in Electronic Governance development at the national or sub-national levels: (1) Colombia - Programa Gobierno en Línea, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology; (2) Argentina - Officina Nacional de Tecnologias de la Informacion, Subsecretaria de Tecnologias de Gestion; (3) Dominican Republic - Centro de Estudios e Investigación de Gobierno Electrónico, Oficina Presidencial de Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación; (4) Chile – Estrategia Digital; (5) Mexico - Secretaría de la Función Pública; (6) Korea - National Information Technology Industry Promotion Agency; (7) Rio Negre Province, Argentina – Ministerio de Hacienda, Obras y Servicios Publicos, Provincia de Rio Negro; (8) Costa Rica - Gobierno Digital; (9) China – National School of Administration; (10) Macao SAR – Government of Macao SAR, China; (11) Mongolia – ICT and Post Authority; and (12) Cameroon – National Agency for ICT; and three invited sessions on the topical areas by the international or multi-national organizations specializing in them: Technology Leadership by International Academy of CIO; Interoperability and Open Standards by Microsoft Corporation; and e-Governance and Development by United Nations Development Programme. The invited sessions took place on 11 November 2009 (countries and regions) and 12 November 2009 (topical areas).

ICEGOV2009 also featured a capacity building program comprising a series of six tutorials - three on domain-independent aspects of Electronic Governance and three on e-applications: (1) Technology by Jim Davies, University of Oxford, UK; (2) Transformation by Pallab Saha, National University of Singapore, Singapore; (3) Policy by Sharon S. Dawes and Theresa A. Pardo, Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, State University of New York, USA; (4) e-Health by Jennifer Zelmer, International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation, Denmark; (5) e-Economy by Wojciech Cellary, Poznan University of Economics, Poland; and (6) e-Leadership by Jean-Pierre Auffret, International Academy of CIO, USA and Elsa Estevez, United Nations University, Macao. The tutorials, held on 10 November 2009 provided the audience with the foundation and general understanding of the area.

The program also included three round-table discussions aimed at the national, regional and international consensus-building on specific topics of interest to the community, respectively: (1) How to Achieve High Take-up of Government Online organized by María Isabel Mejía Jaramillo, Programa Gobierno en Línea; (2) Towards Regional Dialogue to Promote Alliances co-organized by Florencia Ferrer, e-Stratégia Pública, Brazil and Miguel Porrua, Organization of American States, USA; and (3) Innovation Transfer Frameworks for Global Electronic Governance organized by Tomasz Janowski, United Nations University, Macao.

ICEGOV2009 received 102 submissions – papers, case studies, demos and posters from 39 countries and economies: Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, India, Iran, Italy, Kenya, Korea, Macao SAR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine Territory, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, UK, Uruguay and USA. After a review process by the 57-member international Program Committee, the conference accepted 24 papers (8 pages), 29 case studies (6 pages), 6 demos (4 pages) and 17 posters (2 pages). Accepted demos and posters were presented as part of the demo and poster session on 10 November 2009, while accepted papers and case studies were presented as part of 12 regular paper sessions on 11 and 12 November 2009, and presented and discussed as part of 6 synchronized workshops and panel discussions on 13 November.

The current volume comprises all invited as well as submitted and accepted contributions to the ICEGOV2009 conference. The volume is organized into 21 sections: one for invited contributions, 6 for workshops, 12 for regular paper sessions, one for demos and one for posters. The 6 workshops cover the topics of: Architecture and Interoperability, Collaboration and Information Sharing, Knowledge Management, e-Policy, e-Participation and e-Taxation, while 12 regular paper sessions address the topics of: e-Diffusion, e-Democracy, Methodologies, Models and Frameworks, Implementation Planning, Implementation Strategies, Social Applications, Other Applications, Standards and Guidelines, Legal and Regulatory Issues, Infrastructure and Maturity Models. 

This paper explores the relevance and opportunities for the application of mature Formal Techniques – techniques based on mathematical theories and supported by industry-ready tools and methods – to build technical solutions for Electronic Governance. The paper proceeds in four steps: (1) establishes the basic need for Formal Techniques in Electronic Governance, (2) identifies the challenges peculiar to Electronic Governance development, (3) presents the salient features and various application scenarios for Formal Techniques in general, and (4) carries out a mapping between the challenges to Electronic Governance and various application scenarios of Formal Techniques as part of solutions to such challenges. In the second part, the paper presents an overview of the tutorial and workshop on Formal Engineering Methods for Electronic Governance. The tutorial follows the four step program, as above, and the workshop includes the presentations of four papers that exemplify various elements of the mapping, particularly: the use of formal, precise modeling techniques; the importance of security risk assessment; model driven development of software systems; and the provision of semantic frameworks to coordinate development within and across major programs and initiatives. In the last part, the paper discusses how Formal Techniques can contribute to establishing a solid foundation for Electronic Governance.