eGovernance

The potential of ICT for better governance

The multiple dimensions of governance - the structures, roles and relationships governing how society functions - are constantly evolving. These changes are strongly conditioned by historical transformations in society’s underlying values and organisational models and can be analysed from several research perspectives. In recent years we have assisted to a flourishing of tools and ICT based initiative mainly addressing public service delivery and administrative processes that can be placed under the banner of the e-Government phenomenon.

As a complementary activity but inherently different from e-Government, we define e-Governance as the field of activity where policy design, decision-making, co-ordination, arbitration, networking and regulation (just to mention essential steering functions), with ICTs, but also of ICTs, takes place. This involves the relationships of all governance actors, the state representatives being however one of the main stakeholders, and the evolving dynamics resulting from these interactions, in terms of organisational forms, processes, outcomes and impacts from the perspective of both the government and the citizens.

Within this context, e-Governance can therefore be considered as a broad framework to capture the co-evolution of ICTs' various stakeholders with the political institutions, at local, national and global level and, in this perspective, it can also be regarded as a multidimensional construct encompassing ICT research, at the intersections with social, economic, political, and organizational science research, and addressing the investigation of the missions of government in relation to the interests of society.

In this connection, our current research focus proposes a new concept, that of ICT-enabled governance, as the use of ICTs to comprehensively simplify and improve the internal administrative operations of government; facilitate public service interaction between government, citizens and other stakeholders; enable citizen participation and ensure inclusiveness and equal opportunity for all.

We also look specifically at the emerging field of ICT for governance and policy modelling, which can be considered as an umbrella term indicating the interplay between a number of technologies that are applied in order to achieve the target of participative, evidence-based governance and the related organisational and social processes associated with them.

 

 

Ongoing Projects:

• CROSSOVER: Bridging Communities for Next Generation Policy Making
  CROSSOVER is a Support Action for scientific networking funded under FP7 with the main goal to consolidate and expand the existing community active in the domain of ICT for governance and policy modelling. More...
• CROSSROAD: A Participative Roadmap for ICT Research in Electronic Governance and Policy Modelling
  The main goal of the CROSSROAD project is to build a research roadmap in the field of ICT for governance and policy modelling, which will be supported by the contribution of the results deriving from other FP7 projects in this domain. More ...
• EXPGOV: Exploring emerging ICT-enabled governance models in European cities
  The IPTS Exploratory research on ICT-enabled governance models in European cities aims at deepening the understanding of the interplay between ICTs and governance processes at city level in the EU by providing evidence of the changes that ICTs are producing on city governance models. More…

Completed Projects:

• NMSeGH: Next steps in developing IS Services in the New Member States: eGovernement and eHealth
  This research will develop an assessment of the eGovernment and eHealth developments in each New Member State, the specific drivers and barriers, and derive the relevant conclusions in terms of policy and research at national and EU level. More ...
• eGOVERNET
  The objective of the study is to coordinate the creation of national eGovernment RTD programmes and initiatives and to stimulate the integration of existing national eGovernment RTD programmes. More ...
• ICTMOD: ICT-driven models of public governance, public administration and democracy
  The evolution of governance structures in Europe and the impact of new technologies point at new potential models in order for governments to contribute to growth, competitiveness, and social cohesion. This research looks at the potential role of ICT in driving or enabling such new models and will develop scenarios of eGovernment in 2020. More ...
• More information on previous projects, publications and events on eGovernment can be found on the FISTE website.

Dissemination activities:

Related Events (see project pages for a complete list):

• 2011: Borderless eGovernment Services for Europeans (Poznań - Poland, 17-18 November 2011)
• 2011: ICEGOV2011 - 5th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (Tallinn - Estonia, 25-28 September 2011)
• 2010: Lift-Off Toward Open Government Conference (Brussels, 16-17 December 2010). David Broster, Head of the Information Society Unit at JRC-IPTS, took on the role of rapporteur of the event.
• 2010: 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2010) (Beijing, 25-28 October 2010). IPTS organised a Special Session on Future Research on ICT for governance and policy modelling in Europe and presented The CROSSROAD Project and the Future Research Roadmap.
• 2010: IPTS organized and chaired a session on SMART Governance which formed part of the Digital Birmingham Forum on 'Advancing Smarter Growth in Smarter Cities' (Birmingham, 19-20 October 2010). IPTS presentation: EU Research on ICT for governance and policy modelling - The CROSSROAD Project and Draft Research Roadmap
• 2010: Annual Workshop of NET-EUCEN, the Network of European Stakeholders for Enhancing User Centricity in e-Governance (Brussels, 30 September 2010). The presentation of the EXPGOV project aimed to enlarge the constituency and validation community of EXPGOV and to share knowledge and best practices in e-Governance.
• 2010: United Nations Public Service Forum (UNPSA) (Barcelona, 21 June 2010). IPTS presentation: eGovernment in Europe at the crossroad between the past and the future
• 2010: 2nd Congress on the Modernization of Public Services (Granada, 9-11 May 2010). IPTS presentation: El futuro de los Servicios Públicos: una perspectiva europea de investigación
• 2009: Teaming up for the eUnion - 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference. (Malmö - Sweden, 19-20 November 2009). David Broster's (IPTS) presentation (video) starts at 29 minutes 40 seconds on the slider.
• 2007: Workshop on 'eGovernment RTD for Services, Participation and Transparency, Social Impact and Cohesion'. Lisbon: 19 September 2007.
• 2007: Workshop on 'eGovernment Research – Visions and Policies: From scenarios to a roadmap, new programmes, instruments and evaluation'. (Prague, 11 April 2007)
• 2006: Workshop on 'Beginning a Framework for eGovernment Research' (Barcelona, 24 October 2006)
  
• 2005: Workshop on "The future of European eGovernment Research", (IPTS - Seville, Spain, 7 February 2005)
• 2004: FISTE´s eGovernment research line was presented at the IST Days of DG INFSO 2004. The presentations can be viewed here
• 2004: Workshop on "e-Government in the EU in 2010: Key policy and research challenges". (IPTS, Seville, Spain, 4-5 March 2004)
  More on this workshop...

Related Publications:

• 2010 - article: Envisioning Digital Europe 2030: Scenario design on ICT for governance and Policy Modelling. G. Misuraca, D. Broster, C. Centeno. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV2010), Beijing, China, 25-28 October 2010 - ACM International Conference Proceedings Series, ACM Press (pp. 347-356).
• 2010 - article: Assessing emerging ICT-enabled governance models in European cities: results from a mapping survey (2010). G. Misuraca, E. Ferro, B. Caroleo. In proceedings of the eGOV2010 Conference, Lausanne, 29 August – 3 September 2010, IFIP, Springer Publisher, LNCS 6228 (pp. 168-179).
• 2007 - overview report on the EGOVERNET project: "eGovernment Research in the EU" (www.egovernet.org)
• 2007 - report: "The Future of eGovernment: an Exploration of ICT-driven Models of eGovernment for the EU in 2020".
• 2006 - report: "Public Procurement for the Promotion of R&D and Innovation in ICT".
• 2006 - report: "Towards the eGovernment Vision for the EU in 2010: Research Policy Challenges".
• 2005 - article: "Inter-relation between Information Society and eGovernment Developments in the New Member States" , presented at the Eastern Europe e-Gov days´05, 17-18th March 2005, Budapest.
  Article and presentation.
• 2004 - report: "eGovernment in the EU in the Next Decade: The Vision and Key Challenges"