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Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; This paper discusses challenges and obstacles of the Estonian customs authority while implementing the new EU VAT directive aiming to raise efficiency in the VAT declaration life-cycle. The general goal of the directive is to reduce cross-border fraud, gain revenue and modernize the system for governments and businesses. Due to the fact that the impact of the new VAT directive is tremendous, it also changes radically AS-IS work routines of customs authorities. The current paper presents the Estonian experience regarding the implementation of the new work procedures through providing data of the new technology developments and bringing out main concerns in terms of ongoing development activities. Transforming old ICT systems to newer platforms with regards to the new directive also changes current work procedures, which means that adjustments in the organization are also required. The central reason to move towards automatization is the dramatically increasing volumes of shipments requiring customs clearance. However, it is a complex process to achieve this task because of different or non-agreed data sets shared in the existing systems by various stakeholders as well as low quality of data. Consequently, the results of the paper are aimed to aid implementing the changes in various other customs authorities in the EU.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Up to now, public administrations have taken a supply-oriented approach to the design of electronic services for citizens resulting in low usage rates. In contrast, companies in the private sector have been relying on demand-oriented service design for many years. They make use of so-called ‘customer journeys’ to better understand the perception of services by customers and to tailor the design of electronic services to that perception. Although also governments and public administrations have been increasingly recognizing the benefits of customer journeys, there is still a lack of research on the application of customer journeys in the public sector. Especially, there is no customer journey that is applicable to a wide range of public services and serves as a general blueprint for public services. Therefore, in this paper, we present a generic citizen journey that depicts the delivery process for transactional public services from a citizen perspective. The citizen journey depicts the points of interaction that citizens have with public services. We evaluated the citizen journey in a focus group with public servants and a survey with citizens. The evaluation reveals the citizen journey’s general usefulness. Researchers benefit from our citizen journey through a better understanding of the service delivery process and the different steps that could impact citizen experience. Practitioners can use the citizen journey in the design of citizen-centric services and during the actual service delivery to guide citizens through the delivery process.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics, and Automated Decision Making; International audience; Our daily life is profoundly affected by the adoption of automated decision making (ADM) systems due to the ongoing tendency of humans to delegate machines to take decisions. The unleashed usage of ADM systems was facilitated by the availability of large-scale data, alongside with the deployment of devices and equipment. This trend resulted in an increasing influence of ADM systems’ output over several aspects of our life, with possible discriminatory consequences towards certain individuals or groups. In this context, we focus on input data by investigating measurable characteristics which can lead to discriminating automated decisions. In particular, we identified two indexes of heterogeneity and diversity, and tested them on two datasets. A limitation we found is the index sensitivity to a large number of categories, but on the whole results show that the indexes reflect well imbalances in the input data. Future work is required to further assess the reliability of these indexes as indicators of discrimination risks in the context of ADM, in order to foster a more conscious and responsible use of ADM systems through an immediate investigation on input data.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics, and Automated Decision Making; International audience; Open government data initiatives have gained popularity around the world. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to make better use of data. Combining the OGD and AI is crucial to generate more value from data. In this paper we investigate what kind of value was generated through AI and how. A context-input-process-output/outcome (CIPO) framework is developed to describe and compare three cases. The overview of cases shows the huge potential of AI, but it also suggests that AI is hardly used by the public to create value from open data. The objectives of the three cases are efficiency, innovation and crime prevention, whereas common open government objectives like transparency, accountability and participation are given less attention. By using AI, the risks of data privacy and arriving at biased or wrong conclusions become more prominent. With the rise of data collection from Internet of Things, complying with the 5-stars of Berners-Lee becomes more important. We recommend policy makers to stimulate AI projects contributing to the open government goals and ensure that open data meets the 5-star requirements.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Governance requirements for systems supporting information sharing between businesses and government organisations (B&G) are determined by a high variety of stakeholders with often conflicting interests. These conflicting interests can hamper the introduction and scaling-up of ICT-innovations that change their roles and authorities. We address one such innovation: the introduction of blockchain technologies in the B&G context. Who can govern data and the system depends on several elements of the design of a blockchain-based system, particularly the data structure, consensus mechanism and network topology. Design choices regarding these elements affect who can make decisions and hence we call them blockchain control points. These control points require an explicit and well-understood relationship between the design decisions and the interests of stakeholders. Yet, the literature on blockchain technology and governance does not offer such insight. Therefore, we developed a framework to assess the alignment between stakeholders interest and blockchain design choices. This framework consists of three views and their interrelationships, 1) a stakeholder view providing insight into the tensions between stakeholder’s interests and governance requirements, 2), a governance view on the rights concerning the data and the system, and 3) a blockchain control view describing how design decisions on the control points affect whether governance requirements are met and how parties can exercise their rights. Making these links explicit enables an understanding of how technical design choices can trigger organizational dynamics from the stakeholder view and vice versa. Based on the framework we formulate a research agenda concerning blockchain design choices and governance.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; In the course of digitalization, governments increasingly aim at improving service quality for their users. To support this aim, government proactivity is considered a suitable approach: reduction of interactions or even non-interaction between users and government. While government proactivity can be crucial for improving the service quality perceived by its users, there is a lacking of understanding how exactly non-interaction interplays with service quality. Understanding this interplay is important, given that for some services non-interaction might also decrease service quality: for instance, non-interactive student loans spare the user the application but at the same time cause automatic debt. We introduce the purpose of an interaction as a lens to help understand this interplay. The lens utilizes the fact that the purpose of an interaction has to be fulfilled also in a proactive, non-interactive version of the service. We operationalize the lens by proposing two groups of interaction purposes and integrating them with service quality dimensions in an analysis framework. The framework can be used to analyze individual services towards their service quality in a proactive, non-interactive version of the service. Our work contributes to theory by developing a set of interaction purposes to study service interactions and the qualitative interplay of non-interaction and service quality on a service level. Based on an exemplary application of the service free school transport, we demonstrate how government service designers can adapt the framework into a tool for the evaluation and design of individual services.

Part 1: E-Government Foundations; International audience; Public sector organizations are invariable stuck in a contortionist position in regards to how they approach digitalization. Centralized delivery models for IT drive efficiency in the short term, but at the same time they have been identified to potentially counter-act innovation. This study utilizes an interpretative case study of 21 Swedish public agencies and their centralized IT function to analyze how existing IT governance configuration impacts organizational ambidexterity. The empirical base consists of 31 interviews and studies of secondary material in the form of steering documents. The findings show that IT Governance is experienced as decreasing the level of innovation in the organization and hence negatively impacting ambidexterity by systematically skewing the balance between efficiency and innovation. These findings are discussed in relation to previous research, and propositions for future research for better understanding IT governance configuration in the context of ambidexterity are presented and discussed.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Citizens are increasingly expected and even required to go online for much of their interaction with government, making the skills citizens bring to these encounters particularly important. Several skillsets for the use of online resources have been proposed in the general e-government literature. However, few empirical studies explore the experiences and strategies of citizens themselves related to the role of skills in their interaction with government. Consequently, there is a gap in the knowledge regarding which skills are specifically relevant when dealing with government online. To explore this gap, this paper presents a qualitative analysis of interviews with citizens in Danish municipal service centres. The analysis takes its departure in a review of the literature that addresses aspects of skills relevant for the (digital) citizen-government encounter. The paper contributes to the e-government literature, by introducing the concept of domain-skills as a central skill set for citizen self-service. Domain-skills constitute a scaffolding citizens can build on, when looking for and interpreting information and contextualizing it to their situation, making it easier for them to act on their own, with confidence.

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; Public organizations in the role of publishers publish data for anyone to reuse, which can lead to benefits. However, the process descriptions for this publishing work focus on one or a few issues, which leaves out important areas and decisions. Little seems to be known about variations between publishers based on one common point of comparison. Therefore, this paper presents a comparison between two publishers: Namur (Belgium) and Linköping (Sweden). The comparison is based on a process framework, seven in-depth interviews, document studies, and a verification meeting with one respondent. We learned that the OGD manager is an agent of change who need to balance implementation and guidance, the orthodox method of e-mail registration can be used to engage users and monitor impact, the organizational unit for OGD is cross-organizational, and the publisher process framework could be used as ex-ante strategic guidelines and context-specific recommendations.

Part 1: E-Government Foundations; International audience; Several policies for e-government, both on national and supranational levels, express visions and claims for more advanced exploitation of digital opportunities. The paper contributes through a problematization of the idea of utilizing digital opportunities and a conceptualization of this into the polarity of overexploitation vs. underexploitation of digital opportunities. It is based on a qualitative and diagnostic case study on the digitalization of medical certificates and theoretically informed by affordance theory and activity theory. Digital arrangements in the case study are investigated and different types of digital affordances and constraints are revealed. There are examples of surplus of affordances (i.e. overexploitation), lack of affordances and affordances with embedded constraints (i.e. underexploitation), and useful affordances (i.e. adequate exploitation). The application of the affordance and constraint concepts is, in the paper, done through a two-step staging: 1) General characteristics of digital technology give affordances for design. 2) The resulting digital artifacts will have different properties and these properties give affordances but also constraints for use. The resulting conceptualizations are discussed in relation to normative, regulative and other institutional aspects concerning digitalization in the public sector. This is conceptualized in a graphical model describing policy and other pre-conditions, designed digital artifacts, and workpractice effects.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Smart policing refers to the application of data-driven approaches by police authorities. Although the concept is not new, the vast availability of potentially relevant data sources in policing calls for a critical and consolidated review of the literature. To synthesise the evidence on smart policing, we present a systematic review of 112 articles across all relevant disciplines. Earlier work has concentrated on social media communications or predictive policing while this review identifies several new applications associated with new forms of data and their corresponding roles to policing. We develop a framework to show the connections between smart use of data and police approaches and strategies. We discuss how smart policing can be an area of increased interest in digital government and public management research.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Governments aim to digitalize public services. Whereas initially they worked in isolation, nowadays they increasingly link different building blocks together to realize integrated public services. This evolution poses challenges concerning the governance of public services. The purpose of this paper is to identify governance challenges in inter-organizational digital public service delivery. To do this, we investigated a case study that deals with the creation of digital invoicing services in Belgium. The findings show seven groups of governance challenges that incorporate technical, organizational and inter-organizational factors. Governance challenges can be external, related to the environment and the users, as well as internal, related to the digitalization objectives and governance dynamics. Moreover, as public services evolve over time, so do governance challenges, suggesting that governance regimes may have to evolve accordingly to maintain coordinated service delivery.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Technical debt is created when software engineers knowingly or unknowingly introduce shortcuts or unsuitable choices in the development or maintenance of the software system, that will have a negative impact on the future evolution of the system until corrected. Therefore, it is crucial to manage established debt particular in the public sector. The aim of this study is to introduce Technical debt to the field of Digital Government. We create an overview of the state of the art of the knowledge on technical debt management, the methods applied to gain this knowledge, and propose a research agenda to Digital Government scholars. We conduct a systematic literature review, which focuses on the concept of technical debt management. Forty-nine papers published within 2017–2020 are selected and analyzed. We identify several gaps in the existing literature: 1) an absence of theory explaining the relation of events, 2) a shortage of studies conducted in the public sector, 3) and an absence of specific techniques such as observation to study actual technical debt management behavior.

Part 5: Smart Cities; International audience; The transition of our society towards a sustainable, low-carbon reality is challenging governments at all levels to establish, implement and monitor policies that can realize this transition. In the Netherlands, cities are developing data-driven policies to ensure that the urban environment will make the transition from the use of natural gas to sustainable alternatives. However, the collection and (re-)use of data is not without its challenges, which may hamper policymaking, and thereby the ambitions for the transition. Therefore, this paper explores barriers to the data collection and use for the urban heat transition, based on literature and practice. First, an overview of barriers is derived from literature. Subsequently, we interview policy makers of eight frontrunner cities to explore which barriers they encounter in practice. We find that cities need different data in different phases of the strategy development, and that the main barriers for the collection and re-use of data are the required amount of effort and time, and the experienced difficulties to take decisions based on data that is poor in quality, level of detail and topicality.

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; Public administration is one of the largest producers and collectors of data in several domains. Bearing in mind that one of the main pillars of public transparency is the release of social value through government data, and that this right remains a challenge for citizens, in this work we implemented a methodology that uses techniques and Answers and Information Retrieval to retrieve data sets and respond to questions from citizens on a Brazilian open government data portal. Using metrics of information retrieval evaluation, such as accuracy and recall, we obtained satisfactory results in applying the proposed methodology.

Part 1: E-Government Foundations; International audience; The introduction of ICT is requiring public administrations to transform their organizations to take advantage of these technologies. Despite its significance, no studies so far collected quantitative evidence on (i) how and the extent to which this transformation is currently underway and (ii) which drivers and barriers are hindering and leading this transformation process. This article aims at filling this gap by surveying Dutch public administrations. In total, 46 responses from different organizations were collected that provide insight into their transformation efforts. Findings show that digital transformation efforts had only a partial impact at the organizational level: processes, employees’ duties and tasks and information systems are going through a deep transformation, whereas the social system seems to be less affected by the transformation process. Moreover, the analysis results suggest that external drivers are the main motivation for organizational transformation, and that expected internal barriers do not de facto result in digital transformation. These counterintuitive results suggest that in public administrations only exogenous input result in a sense of urgency and that the perceived barriers to transformation can be overcome if there is sufficient external pressure.

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; Previous research on Open Government Data (OGD) struggles with synthesising a holistic perspective of OGD systems. A perspective that has dealt with vast, complex systems is public utility. Public utilities are, for example, water supply networks and electric power grids. This study explores what we can learn from a public utility perspective when perceiving and organising OGD systems. We used a hermeneutic literature review combined with a snowballing approach, resulting in a selection of 39 studies. We compare public utilities and OGD systems to derive five lessons: (1) an OGD system can be perceived from a node-flow view, (2) the foundational data flow of an OGD system starts at data collection and ends at data used by the public in an everyday context, (3) the organisation of OGD systems needs to consider the combinability, interpretability, and boundless reusability of data, (4) OGD systems need governance organisations that cover the whole system, and (5) OGD systems could replace existing data provision systems and be made a public utility if certain characteristic problems are overcome.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics, and Automated Decision Making; International audience; The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to lead to a severe recessionary economic crisis with quite negative consequences for large numbers of firms and citizens; however, this is an ‘old story’: recessionary economic crises appear repeatedly in the last 100 years in the market-based economies, and they are recognized as one of the most severe and threatening weaknesses of them. They can result in closure of numerous firms, and decrease of activities of many more, as well as poverty and social exclusion for large parts of the population, and finally lead to political upheaval and instability; so they constitute one of the most threatening and difficult problems that governments often face. For the above reasons it is imperative that governments develop effective public policies and make drastic interventions for addressing these economic crises. Quite useful for these interventions can be the prediction of the vulnerability of individual firms to recessionary economic crisis, so that government can focus its attention as well as its scarce economic resources on the most vulnerable ones. In this direction our paper presents a methodology for using existing government data in order to predict the vulnerability of individual firms to economic crisis, based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. Furthermore, a first application of the proposed methodology is presented, based on existing data from the Greek Ministry of Finance and Statistical Authority concerning 363 firms for the economic crisis period 2009–2014, which gives encouraging results.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Job absenteeism and health problems are frequently caused by elevated exposure to work-related stress. The public sector is particularly affected by this development. Nevertheless, public sector organizations seem to have issues to reliably detect stress or to discuss about this topic in an objective and factual manner. Data visualizations have been found to be a powerful boundary object for sense-making and for unraveling issues that lie under the surface. Based on a pilot study at a medium-sized municipality in Switzerland, we thus developed, tested, and discussed various alternative visual representations for creating awareness about occupational stress. The results of this study showcase the hidden potential and perils of analyzing physiolytics data on aggregate level.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; In spite of massive investment and increased adoption of digital services, citizens continue to use traditional channels to interact with public organizations. The channel choice (CC) field of research tries to understand citizens’ interactions with public authorities to make the interaction more efficient and increase citizen satisfaction. However, most studies have been conducted either as surveys of hypothetical services or in experimental settings, leading to a lack of empirical data from actual use contexts. Therefore, we present the results of a sequential mixed methods study which combines observations of citizen-caseworker interaction in a call center, contextual interviews with callers, and a survey classifying topics from 10,000 telephone calls. We contribute to the CC field and practice with rich empirical data from studies of actual channel choices. Specifically, the study explores the multiplex nature of real-life CC and demonstrate how telephone calls can be part of a process, which occurs across both traditional and digital channels. Moreover, we identify problems, which cause telephone calls related to digital services, and classify these in two groups: information related problems and action related problems.

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; According to Open Government Data, governments should co-operate with citizens in order to co-create Open Data (OD). When large groups are involved, there is the need to orchestrate the work by clearly defining and distributing roles. Our Regional Administration - the Council of the Campania Region in Italy - claimed a motivating use case which inspired the proposed roles involved in the OD production process. We consider validator, creator, and filler as roles. To each role tasks and responsibilities are attached. Roles and related activities are integrated into SPOD (a Social Platform for Open Data) to guide users in producing high-quality OD by proactive quality assurance techniques.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; The paper presents the results of the pilot study of C2G online trust, that covers citizens’ trust in communication with the government via e-government, e-participation and social media channels. Based on the survey carried out in St. Petersburg, we explore dimensions of C2G trust and test the impact of perceived government responsiveness, user experience and socio-demographic factors in shaping trust. Our findings suggest that both perceived responsiveness and user experience influence the level of trust, while age, gender and education are not significant when controlled to the frequency of Internet use. The research proposes to view C2G trust as a multidimensional phenomenon, as its dynamics may vary across the tools and sectors used. Implications for future research are given.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics and Automated Decision Making; International audience; Over the past years, a number of new technologies have emerged with a potential to disrupt many spheres of the society. While public sector traditionally lacks behind business in innovation, significant changes are anticipated with the use of disruptive technologies. The implementation of the new technologies for the government service provision, along with possible benefits, need to be well thought through and challenges need to be carefully discussed, analysed and evaluated. This paper uses scenario-technique to identify research and training needs for the implementation of disruptive technologies in government services. Using the input of 58 experts from three workshops, research and training needs for the internet of things, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, as well as big data technologies have been identified. The identified needs can serve as a starting point for a broader and more informed discussion about the knowledge and skills that the researchers and practitioners of digital government need to obtain for the broad use of such new (disruptive) technologies.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; This paper maps the participatory process applied during the development of open government commitments by twenty-nine Open Government Partnership countries. It investigates the role and perceived value of e-participation practices and their relationship to inclusive interaction with stakeholders. The insights of the paper on the perceived value of the tools and methods used and the main impediments to the open government commitment creation process may help governments more effectively design their public participation efforts and increase the level of civic engagement in policy making. Although the results of this analysis derive from activities related to open government reforms, they may also be applicable to introducing participatory public policy formulation approaches in a broader range of policy domains.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics and Automated Decision Making; International audience; An important trend in the area of digital government is its expansion beyond the support of internal processes and operations, as well as transactions and consultations with citizens and firms, which were the main objectives of its first generations, towards the support of higher-level functions of government agencies, with main emphasis on public policy making. This gives rise to the gradual development of policy analytics. Another important trend in the area of digital government is the increasing exploitation of artificial intelligence techniques by government agencies, mainly for the automation, support and enhancement of operational tasks and lower-level decision making, but only to a very limited extent for the support of higher-level functions, and especially policy making. Our paper contributes towards the advancement and the combination of these two important trends: it proposes a policy analytics methodology for the exploitation of existing public and private sector data, using a big data oriented artificial intelligence technique, feature selection, in order to support policy making concerning one of the most serious problems that governments face, the economic crises. In particular, we present a methodology for exploiting existing data of taxation authorities, statistical agencies, and also of private sector business information and consulting firms, in order to identify characteristics of a firm (e.g. with respect to strategic directions, resources, capabilities, practices, etc.) as well as its external environment (e.g. with respect to competition, dynamism, etc.) that affect (positively or negatively) its resilience to the crisis with respect to sales revenue; for this purpose an advanced artificial intelligence feature selection algorithm, the Boruta ‘all-relevant’ variables identification one, is used. Furthermore, an application of the proposed economic crisis policy analytics methodology is presented, which provides a first validation of the usefulness of our methodology.

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; The European Data Portal (EDP) is a central access point for metadata of Open Data published by public authorities in Europe and acquires data from more than 70 national data providers. The platform is a starting point in adopting the Linked Data specification DCAT-AP, aiming to increase interoperability and accessibility of Open Data. In this paper, we present the design of the central data management components of the platform, responsible for metadata storage, data harvesting and quality assessment. The core component is based on CKAN, which is extended by the support for native Linked Data replication to a triplestore to ensure legacy compatibility and the support for DCAT-AP. Regular data harvesting and the creation of detailed quality reports are performed by custom components adressing the requirements of DCAT-AP. The EDP is well on track to become the core platform for European Open Data and fostered the acceptance of DCAT-AP. Our platform is available here: https://www.europeandataportal.eu.

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; An important part of Open Data is of statistical nature and describes economic and social indicators monitoring population size, inflation, trade, and employment. Combining and analysing Open Data from multiple datasets and sources enable the performance of advanced data analytics scenarios that could result in valuable services and data products. However, it is still difficult to discover and combine open statistical data that reside in different data portals. Although Linked Open Statistical Data (LOSD) provide standards and approaches to facilitate combining statistics on the Web, various interoperability challenges still exist. In this paper, we define interoperability conflicts that hamper combining and analysing LOSD from different portals. Towards this end, we start from a thorough literature review on databases and data warehouses interoperability conflicts. Based on this review, we define interoperability conflicts that may appear in LOSD. We defined two types of schema-level conflicts namely, naming conflicts and structural conflicts. Naming conflicts include homonyms and synonyms and result from the different URIs used in the data cubes. Structural conflicts result from different practices of modelling the structure of data cubes.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; The public sector is facing an equation that cannot be solved by continuing doing business as usual. External demands of availability, quality and resilience of services, as well as internal demands of resource efficiency, are putting pressure on the public sector to seek for innovation. In this study, we focus on local government innovation where high expectations are set on better utilisation of employees’ creativity and innovative capacity. Based on a qualitative case study of an innovation programme in a Swedish local government organisation, this study applies institutional theory as a theoretical lens to further investigate and analyse the relationship between formal and informal structures of local government innovation. The institutional structures related to norms and values, legitimacy and decoupling as well as digital artefacts as institutional carriers are discussed. Implications for practice show that formal structures, processes and digital artefacts to support local government innovation are important in this work. However, to achieve government innovation, equal attention should also be given to informal institutional structures of innovation. For research, this implies that government innovation studies can benefit from an institutional theory perspective to develop a better understanding of how informal structures affect related processes. We conclude by arguing that the needed change towards the innovative bureaucracy is a transformative innovation in itself that needs to be acknowledged.

Part 1: E-Government Foundations; International audience; Governments across the world are intensifying their use of digital technology. One way to generate an understanding of the effects of technology in the public sector is to study values. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how values in the Swedish national e-Government have developed over time. This research studies Swedish government documents between 1961 and 2018 during three periods of computerization: Automatic Data Processing, Information Technology, and Digitalization. A theoretical framework that consists of four value positions (i.e. professionalism, efficiency, service, and engagement) is utilized. The findings suggest that technological paradigms tend to generate value congruence in policy documents, followed by value divergence in evaluations. Currently, digitalization is perceived as the enabler of several values. While both IT and digitalization are referred to as tools or means, the development towards an information, knowledge, or data-driven society is also described as inevitable. The service ideal became dominant through the use of internet-based technology, while efficiency is often prioritized in large-scale projects. Engagement values are associated with a futuristic form of democracy in government documents, but rarely converted into practice. The role of professionalism is two-fold: it acts both as an enabler and as a constraint to the other values. The paper concludes with suggesting that the current development of adapting laws and regulations to enable digitalization might lead to an eroded bureaucracy, with uncertain value.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics and Automated Decision Making; International audience; Big data and analytics have received a lot of attention in e-government research over the last decade and practitioners and researchers are looking into the transformative power of this technology to create for example competitive advantage, and increase transparency. Recent research points out that while parties are aware of the transformative power of this technology, understanding the value that this technology can bring for their specific organizations still remains a challenge. Data analytics is in particular interesting to support supervision tasks of governments. Here we take the customs supervision as a typical example where data analytics is used to support government in its supervision role. The main question addressed in this paper is: How to understand the value of big data analytics for government supervision? To address this question this research builds upon a case study where big data analytics solutions are developed and piloted as part of the PROFILE EU-funded research project. We adapt and utilize a recently published integrated model of big data value realization of Günther et al. [5] as a conceptual lens to structure the case findings. As a result we develop a more detailed model for analyzing value of big data specifically in the context of customs as an example of a specific domain of government supervision. This research contributes to the eGovernment literature on articulating value from big data analytics, particularly focusing on the role of government supervision.

Part 1: E-Government Foundations; International audience; For long time research and practice in the area of Electronic Government (e-government) has been focusing on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for improving the efficiency government agencies’ internal operations, as well as transactions with citizens and firms. However, the increased needs and expectations of citizens, and the proliferation of ‘participatory democracy’ ideas, gave rise to a new generation of ICT exploitation by government for increasing and enhancing citizens’ participation. Furthermore, the increasing social problems and challenges that had to be addressed by government through appropriate public policies, such as the increasing inequalities and poverty, the aging society, the environmental degradation, and the rising number of ‘unpredictable’ events, such as the financial and economic crisis, give rise to the development of a new wave of e-government focusing on policy analytics for supporting the design of effective responses - public policies for these challenges. Therefore, evolutions in the needs of modern societies, in combination with technological evolutions, give rise to evolutions in e-government, and the emergence of new generations of it. This paper aims at the identification and better understanding of the main characteristics of the different e-Government generations, using an analytical framework based on two rounds of literature review. The results of the study provide insights on the main features of the three main e-government generations, regarding their main goals, obstacles, key methods and tools, and reveal the new emerging generation of e-Government 3.0 and its basic characteristics. Furthermore, within the first and to some extent the second e-Government generation there have been substantial advancements, which have created distinct sub-generations of them, revealed and analysed through extensive relevant growth/maturity stages research.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics and Automated Decision Making; International audience; The constant increase of technical possibilities makes the automation of processes more and more attractive for the public administration. Due to the advances in Artificial intelligence, processes can be automated today which only a few years ago had to be carried out by humans. But not all administrative processes can be automated from a technical point of view. From the multitude of several thousand administrative procedures, decision-makers must select those processes which are deemed appropriate for partial or full automation. This paper seeks to present a possible framework to evaluate opportunities for automation through the decomposition of administrative procedures.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; The four-day Cascadia Rising exercise of 2016, which simulated a magnitude 9+ rupture of the almost 700 miles long Cascadian subduction zone with up to 5 min of violent shaking followed by a 20 to 30 feet-high tsunami in the Northwestern United States, was one of the largest response exercises of a catastrophic incident ever conducted in the United States. It involved 23,000 professional responders in three states in the Pacific Northwest. In reality, the simulated catastrophe would likely carry a five-digit number of fatalities and send the entire region on a decades-long course of recovery to a “new” normal, in which nothing would be close to what it once had been. The study investigated the numerous managerial challenges that responders faced. Communication and coordination challenges were found the most prevalent among other challenges. The research also uncovered the lack of standardization of response structures, processes, and procedures as major inhibitors of a more effective response besides other inhibiting factors. While the “containment” and “effective mitigation” of a truly catastrophic incident is illusory, the study provides recommendations regarding preparation and problem mitigation in the management of the response.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Income support schemes are key policies in an inclusive welfare state. To make them legitimate they are strictly regulated. As such they provide good prerequisites for standardization and automation, in theory. The aim of this paper is to analyze a case of municipal administration of income support, where automatization is resisted despite managements’ ambitions. We focus on the case workers’ interpretations of changes conducive to automatization and discuss how different service logics may explain the tensions and resistance of the frontline case workers. Our findings suggest that digitalisation and automatization challenge the balance of two logics and raise concerns of accountability in exercise of public authority; and concerns of value in terms of support towards self-sustainability and social integration of the clients (We are humbly grateful to the research council FORTE, for the opportunity to carry this research, through financing of the project: “The computer says no!” – en studie om det offentligas legitimitet och medborgares tillit när e-förvaltningen växer fram. We are also grateful to our informants in the Income Support unit in the municipality who shared their perceptions and experiences in this research.).

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; Data market initiatives have, by assigning monetary value to data, and connecting the various actors responsible for its efficient production and consumption, far reaching consequences for national economies. The Data Market Austria (DMA) project represents a unique opportunity for Austria to leverage the enormous potential socio-economic benefits accruing from increased trade of data. At the same time, however, a number of key challenges to the successful uptake of the project needs to be considered, and new problems emerging from this new form of digital commercial infrastructure need to be anticipated and addressed. This study aims to examine how the benefits accruing to increased participation in a data-driven ecosystem can be applied to tackle the long-standing socio-cultural challenges and the possible societal and cultural impediments to the successful unfolding out of a data market. Theoretical discussions framed from arguments obtained through a systematic review of academic and scholarly literature are juxtaposed with empirical data obtained from data science experts and DMA project personnel to test whether they stand up to real-world practicalities and to narrow the focus onto the Austria-specific context. Our findings reveal that data is a dual-purpose commodity that has both commercial value and social application. To amplify the benefits accruing from increased data trading, it is vital that a country establishes a sound open data strategy and a balanced regulatory framework for data trading.

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; Members of national parliaments (MPs) often have ties to interest groups, or ‘lobbies’, which might try to influence policies. In order to quantify the influence of lobbies on parliamentary decisions, we design an online platform that allows users to explore votes results, focusing on how interest groups members voted, in order to identify which lobbies voted for or against a given measure and in which proportion. We apply this approach to the specific case of the Swiss Federal Parliament. To achieve this, we build a database that combines two sources of openly available data: (1) a register of politicians’ interest ties, maintained by Lobbywatch.ch, an association dedicated to the monitoring of Swiss politicians’ interest ties and (2) the individual votes results in the Swiss Federal Parliament, accessible through a web-service provided by the parliamentary service of the Swiss government. Our platform allows users to explore the following perspectives of the data: (1) general information about lobbies (e.g. size, domains), (2) individual votes results, with a drill-down by lobby that shows the distribution of votes in each interest group for each specific vote, and (3) overall (dis)agreement of individual MPs with their party and lobbies across all considered votes. We believe that such an exploration platform can be a powerful tool to help quantify the influence of lobbies in politics. Indeed, a qualitative evaluation of the prototype was conducted with 7 domain experts (5 journalists and 2 politicians). They were all able to complete successfully the submitted tasks. They rated its usability and usefulness as rather high (mean respectively 7.4/10 and 6.8/10). Moreover, most of them reported that such a platform has the potential to increase the accountability of politicians towards the people and consequentially to raise the trust of the population in their elected representatives.

Part 5: Smart Cities; International audience; The use of information and communication technologies by governments is increasing, in many cases to establish new channels of interaction with citizens; and digital by default has been presented as a guide for the development of electronic services. This article discusses the possibility of creating new exclusion forms and is based on the analysis of the profile of use of service channels SP156 of the São Paulo City. To do so, it uses databases of service requests, made available through the City’s Open Data Portal, as well as sociodemographic data from the city’s districts. It was verified that there is a statistically significant correlation between the average monthly income level of the districts and the type of channel used by the citizen to make the requests. It is concluded that it is important to provide multiple channels for citizens to interact with governments so as not to lead to further social exclusion.

Part 3: Open Data: Social and Technical Aspects; International audience; The energy consumption of data centres is increasing over and over. However, there are few decision support systems introduced for data centre practitioners to use it for their daily operations, including simulating their new server installation and forecasting power consumption for the target periods. We propose a simulation model based on CloudSim, which is widely used for data centre research. Our simulation model will be tested with datasets, including IT work-loads, cooling performance, and power consumption of servers and cooling devices. In the final stage, we provide a decision support system to monitor, forecast, and optimise the power consumption of a data centre easily on the web.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics and Automated Decision Making; International audience; Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are on the rise in almost every aspect of society, business and government. Especially in government, it is of interest how the application of AI can be streamlined: at least, in a controlled environment, in order to be able to evaluate potential (positive and negative) impact. Unfortunately, reuse in development of AI applications and their evaluation results lack interoperability and transferability. One potential remedy to this challenge would be to apply standardized artefacts: not only on a technical level, but also on an organization or semantic level. This paper presents findings from a qualitative explorative case study on online citizen participation in Germany that reveal insights on the current standardization level of AI applications. In order to provide an in-depth analysis, the research involves evaluation of two particular AI approaches to natural language processing. Our findings suggest that standardization artefacts for streamlining AI application exist predominantly on a technical level and are still limited.

Part 5: Smart Cities; International audience; The introduction of Smart City technologies is aimed at creating various types of public values, including operational, political and social values. One of the basic values created by the Smart City is the increase in trust by its stakeholders. Trust is often considered as one of the most important factors contributing to the success of Smart Cities. The level of trust affects the interactions between actors, which is the basis for the successful development of a Smart City. Interaction is needed the generation of the required public values. Therefore, it is important to know the sources of trust and the degree of their presence in the city turned into a smart one. This paper describes one of the recent studies of trust factors done within the framework of the “Smart St. Petersburg” development project. The findings show that the willingness to participate in the Smart City’s strategy development discussion and its development plans co-creation highly depends on the willingness to trust municipal authorities and the familiarity with the Smart City’s solutions from around the world.

Part 4: AI, Data Analytics and Automated Decision Making; International audience; Artificial intelligence (AI) is said to be the next big phase in digitalization. There is a global ongoing race to develop, implement and make use of AI in both the private and public sector. The many responsibilities of governments in this race are complicated and cut across a number of areas. Therefore, it is important that the use of AI supports these diverse aspects of governmental commitments and values. The aim of this paper is to analyze how AI is portrayed in Swedish policy documents and what values are attributed to the use of AI. We analyze Swedish policy documents and map benefits, considerations and risks with AI into different value ideals, based on an established e-government value framework. We conclude that there is a discrepancy in the policy level discourse on the use of AI between different value ideals. Our findings show that AI is strongly associated with improving efficiency and service quality in line with previous e-government policy studies. Interestingly, few benefits are highlighted concerning engagement of citizens in policy making. A more nuanced view on AI is needed for creating realistic expectations on how this technology can benefit society.

Part 2: E-Government Services and Open Government; International audience; Government 3.0, which builds on openness and transparency, sharing, increased communication and collaboration, government reorganization through integration and interoperability, and use of new technologies, is an emerging concept in eGovernance. However, few systems that qualify as Government 3.0 have been described in detail so far. And there is a lack of research on how governments can put in place such systems. This study investigates and characterizes an innovative eGovernment project, based on Open Source Software (OSS), that could be considered as an example of a Government 3.0 project. Therefore, we report from a case study of X-Road, an originally Estonian eGovernment project for creating a data sharing infrastructure, which today is also used in other countries. We present the main characteristics of X-Road from the point of view of Government 3.0, how the X-Road project is organized, compare its organization to other OSS projects, identify who contributes to the project, and point out what challenges are perceived by their stakeholders. We conclude offering some reflections on how X-Road and other Government 3.0 projects can benefit from OSS.

Part 5: Smart Cities; International audience; The advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have extended the applicability of citizen coproduction in government service delivery and have entailed transformative changes, especially at the city level. City governments around the globe increasingly rely on the private sector to set ICT-based urban innovations, like initiatives to involve citizens in the coproduction of smart mobility. Although there are many benefits of ICT-based coproduction, there is nevertheless the potential for tension between private companies and the government with whom they are cooperating. Those tensions are built on the differences in interests and values of private and public actors, and the way of realizing them, and they can compromise the vision and duty of the government. We, therefore, aim to understand the potential impact of private companies’ involvement on the expectations and perceptions of coproducing actors towards social-oriented and service-oriented public values. We conducted an exploratory in-depth case study of the smart bike-sharing system in one of the major cities in Flanders, Belgium. Data were collected through official documents and 27 semi-structured interviews with key coproducing actors. These data were then qualitatively analyzed using Nvivo software. Our exploratory case study indicated that the private actor upholds the realization of values such as efficiency, reliability, and ease of access by bringing in resources and expertise to coproduce smart mobility. However, certain social-oriented values like citizen empowerment and engagement, and (digital) inclusiveness are not part of the private partner’s vision. The study highlights the potential assets and risks for the realization of public values when dealing with conflicting interests between coproducing actors, and in this way considers a different angle on private companies’ involvement in the coproduction of public services.

The chapter offers a necessary summary of the key concepts of financial conditions, financial sustainability, and intergenerational equity in local governments through a close examination of different approaches. Focusing on a narrative literature review approach, the chapter has two main aims: first, to provide evidence on how to define the terms of theoretical and practical underpinnings to represent financial conditions in local governments in order to clarify the distinctive feature of financial conditions with a particular focus on the specific measures for budgetary solvency: sustainability, flexibility, and vulnerability; second, taking into account that the link between financial sustainability and intergenerational equity seems to be under-investigated, the authors discuss what the conditions for achieving financial health are while ensuring intergenerational equity with reference to the level of citizens' quality of life.

The chapter discusses Financial Sustainability (FS) in relation with governance setting for service delivery adopted by Local Governments (LGs). The changing corporate governance setting in public entities and their relationships with other entities that are co-makers in service delivery requires a wider vision of FS, encompassing all entities involved. The chapter aims to analyze how specific accounting tools and techniques can assist in the control of an LG ’s FS based on the governance setting adopted for service delivery. More precisely, a standard accounting tool or technique to detect fiscal distress would not be effective for all LGs. Through the analysis of five case studies, the chapter demonstrates that promoting FS requires the adoption of accounting tools and techniques consistent with the governance model adopted.