EGOSE 2015 was a second international academic conference in the field of Electronic Governance focused on the use of ICT for greater openness, transparency and democracy in the Eurasian region (see information about the first conference here). It was organized by the e-Government Centre of the ITMO University in St Petersburg, Russia, during 24-25 November 2015 at the University’s premises. The Conference remains the only English-language academic event on this topic held in the region, with the proceedings published in the authoritative ACM Digital Library within its International Conference Proceedings Series. Selected revised papers of the first EGOSE 2014 Conference comprise the Special Issue of the International Journal of Electronic Governance.
As many as 132 authors from 18 countries submitted 63 papers that were double-blind reviewed by the Conference Programme Committee members (41 in total) representing Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Croatia, Estonia, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Kazakhstan, Latvia, Macao, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey and United States of America.
As a result of the review process, 43 papers were accepted for presentation and subsequent publishing in the Conference Proceedings.
The Conference (68 participants in total), opened by Andrei Chugunov, Director of e-Government Centre, were welcomed by Vladimir Vasilyev, Rector of the ITMO University, followed by the greeting remarks delivered by Oleg Kachanov (Deputy Director, Department of e-Government Development, Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, Sergei Demochko (Vice-Chairman of the Committee on IT and Informatization of Leningrad Region).
There were three plenary and six research papers sessions that constituted the backbone of EGOSE 2015.
Day 1
Plenary Session 1 (chaired by Dmitrii Trutnev, Russia) in the morning of 24 November 2015 featured a first keynote speech entitled “A Realistic Look at Open Data” made by Sharon DAWES, Professor of the Center for Technology in Government, University at Albany, SUNY (USA). Research sessions that followed were organized around the main three themes:
- Research Papers Session 1 – Openness in the Digital Context: Data, Democracy, Inclusion(chaired by Evgeny Styrin, Russia)
- Research Papers Session 2 – e-Government Performance: Models, Interoperability, Services (chaired by Arry Akhmad Arman, Indonesia)
- Research Papers Session 3 – Law and governance in the Information Society (chaired by Radomir Bolgov, Russia)
While the topics of the first two sessions were in line with the first Conference EGOSE 2014, the third session, devoted to the legal aspects of e-Governance, was a welcomed addition expanding further the Conference agenda.
The Gala Dinner that concluded the first day was used as an occasion to award the most interesting and innovative papers that collected the highest number of scores during the review process. The Best Paper Award went to Anna Trakhtenberg (Institute of Philosophy and Law of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences) for her well-structured and convincingly argument paper “Electronic State Services from the Government’s and Citizens’ Standpoint”. The three encouragement Lauriat Awards were handed over to Luo Yanlong Lyle, Lei Iat Seng Philip and Tse Tan Sim Rita for the paper“Evaluating Macao’s Gaming Industry using Sentiment Analysis on Weibo Tweets”; to Roman Amelin and Sergei Chanov for the paper “State information systems in e-government in the Russian Federation: problems of legal regulation”; and to Neeta Verma and M P Gupta for the paper “Challenges in Publishing Open Government Data: A Study in Indian Context”.
Day 2
Plenary Session 2 (chaired by Arne Pautsch, Germany) started with a Conference second keynote presentation “Engagement models for co-creation and co-production of public services” delivered remotely via video link by Maria WIMMER, Professor at the University Koblenz-Landau in Germany. It was followed by the third keynote entitled “Computational-based decision support for large city governance: big data, simulation scenarios and active monitoring” presented by Alexander BOUKHANOVSKY, Director of the eScience Research Institute of ITMO University.
The research paper sessions included the following themes:
- Research Papers Session 4 – Digital by default: networks, infrastructures, resources, Smart City technologies (chaired by Leonardo Bernal, Colombia)
- Research Papers Session 5 – Web research: Questions, agenda, methods (chaired by Lyudmila Vidiasova, Russia)
- Research Papers Session 6 – Public communication in the era of New Media: Mobilization, collaboration, information management (chaired by Michael Boireau, Belgium)
Session 5 also included a knowledge-sharing event “Computational city science infrastructure” organized by the eScience Research Institute of ITMO University.
Accepted papers have been published in the ACM International Conference Proceedings Series
Two papers submitted from India and Cameroon were awarded as the Best Papers at a Gala-Dinner ceremony.
Next Steps
The concluding Plenary Session 3 discussed the Conference next edition and also the proceedings publishing issues. It was announced that in 2017 the ITMO University will host the 16th IFIP Electronic Government (EGOV) and 9th Electronic Participation (ePart) Conference 2016. There will be a special EGOSE section organized within the IFIP event. It was also suggested to have an EGOSE-dedicated Symposium “Digital Transformation” organized during the annual international conference "Internet and modern society" to be held in 21-24 June 2016 (see more here ).
For more information, please contact Dmitrii Trunev (Conference Director) and Vitalina Karachay (Conference Information Manager): conf@egov-center.ru