The 8th annual international scientific and practical conference EGOSE2021 was held on November 24-25, 2021 in St. Petersburg, Russia in a mixed intramural/online format due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions. This time our conference was organized by the eGovernance Center of ITMO University in collaboration with the North-West Institute of Management, Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) and with the active support of the E-Development Partnership in the North-West of Russia, the Council of Municipalities of St. Petersburg and the INTERREG BSR project “Empowering Participatory Budgeting in the Baltic Sea Region” (EmPaci).

The conference agenda covered its traditional list of topics that make EGOSE unique in a wider Eurasian region, namely:

• Participatory Governance and Participatory Budgeting
• Social Media: Tools for analysis, participation, and impact
• eGovernance and Policy Modelling
• Big Data, Computer Analytics and Governance
• Cases and perspectives of the government transformations
• eGovernance and Eurasian Integration
• Open Government Prospects
• Information Society and eGovernance
• Citizen Centred E-Government
• Smart City and Quality of Life

69 papers coming from 11 counties were submitted for review by the Programme Committee which consisted of 86 members from 62 countries (Russia–22, Portugal–9, Grece-8, India-7, Austria-6, Germany-5…) and which provided an average of 3.9 reviews per article (minimum - 3). As a result, the PC selected 23 research papers (acceptance rate – 30%) for publication in this volume.

Prof. Marijn JANSSEN representing respectively the Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) delivered key-note plenary speech “Adaptive Governance for a Resilient Digital Society”, followed by three paper presentation sessions. Six papers were presented and discussed at the first session dedicated to Digital Technology & Design in government services, policies, laws, practices. The second research session addressed the problematics of the Digital Society viewed from the perspective of openness, participation, trust and competences, as discussed in twelve papers. Other four papers presented at the third session reported the research results in the field of Digital Government & Economy. Each session was concluded by discussion.

Accepted papers have been published in Volume 1529  of the Springer's Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) Series, indexed by Scopus DBLP, Google Scholar, EI-Compendex, Mathematical Reviews, SCImago.