OA Journal of eDemocracy and Open Government: New Chief Editor

Anneke Zuiderwijk is the new Chief Editor of JeDEM

We are pleased to welcome Anneke Zuiderwijk as the new Chief Editor of the Journal of eDemocracy and Open Government for the next four years.

Anneke is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on open data. More specifically, her objective is to develop theory for the development of infrastructures and institutional arrangements that incentivize open data sharing and use behavior by governments, researchers, companies and citizens. Open data has enormous potential to generate benefits and value and there is still a large gap between the current situation and the potential value generation. This motivates her to enthusiastically work on this topic throughout her entire academic career.

During her PhD, Anneke developed a theory for the development of open government data infrastructures, which she also transformed into advice for open data policy-makers. Several elements of her theory have been implemented in international projects, including FP7 ENGAGE (2014) and H2020 VRE4EIC (2018). Anneke obtained her PhD with distinction, which is only awarded to the top 5% of TU Delft PhD candidates. In 2016, she received the international Digital Governance Junior Scholar Award and was ranked as one of the most influential open data researchers worldwide.[1] She has been invited as a keynote speaker for various conferences and events (e.g. the International Conference on Future Environment and Innovation, 2014) and served as a conference programme chair (dg.o2018, dg.o2019), conference chair (I3E-2015), associate chair (OpenSym2017), associate editor (ICIS2019) and track chair (CeDEM2014; 2015, 2016, 2017, EGOV-CeDEM-ePART2018, 2019). The importance of her research has also been emphasized through best paper awards Anneke received at important conferences in her field of information science (EGOV2012, Dg.o2014). Finally, she is the co-founder of three online courses: Open Data professional education (53 experts), Open Science MOOC (1,500+ participants from 100+ countries) and Open Government MOOC (9261 participants from 150+ countries).

Anneke on her new role as Chief Editor of JeDEM:

“I am excited about my new role as editor-in-chief for JeDEM. I have experienced the process of publishing journal papers from the author perspective many times and I also have experience as guest editor of special issues for the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (two issues in 2014), Government Information Quarterly (2016) and Information Polity (2019). I am now ready for the next step; the full experience as editor-in-chief.

JeDEM has several very appealing characteristics, including its open access policy, being free of charge, its rapid publishing process and its comprehensive indexing within Scopus, EBSCO, DOAJ, Google scholar, and the Public Knowledge Project metadata harvester. This gives authors the opportunity to make timely research results available to a wide public, increase researcher and research visibility and have an impact in the field. I see much potential for further improving both the quality and reputation of JeDEM.

As editor-in-chief I will focus on the strategic decisions, networks and positioning and development of the journal. I am very enthusiastic about working with the highly committed and motivated JeDEM team of managing editors and editorial board members, and I very much appreciate their full support. I look forward to this new journey”.

We are looking forward to working with Anneke!

More information:

Anneke Zuiderwijk: http://www.tbm.tudelft.nl/AZuiderwijkvanEijkJeDEM: www.jedem.orgTo contact Anneke Zuiderwijk: a.m.g.zuiderwijk-vaneijk@tudelft.nl

 

[1] Hossain, M. A., Dwivedi, Y. K., & Rana, N. P. (2016). State-of-the-art in open data research: Insights from existing literature and a research agenda. Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 26(1-2), 14-40.

CeDem Asia 2016, Day 1, Afternoon Presentations

Ivo Babaja: Open Government and National Sovereignity

The International Open Data (OD) Charter developed by GGP (Open Government Partnerships) and international organizations declares that OD should be made available to the widest of users by anyone, anywhere. This is included in some national legislations. on the other hand this principle stands in clear opposition to the principle of national sovereignity. OD initiatives could be perceived as disruptive innovations. Assessing e-government initiatives from the point of disruptive businesses, they can be evaluated using two factors: impact (how much it changes the system) and rationality (how much the impact is reasonable). Rationality is actually not existent, and impact is presumed to be low. The global openness request stands in opposition to our “competitive edge”. It may also introduce uncertainty about the ultimate goals of the e-government process and ideas.

Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen: E-government and governance: The Danish-Japanese timelines and models compared

Workshop Open Government Data at UNU Institute, Macau

The Centre for E-Governance participated in a workshop in Macau, which was hosted by the UNU (Institute for Computing and Society). The goal of the workshop was to exchange knowledge and ideas on Open Government Data (OGD), but also on aspects of the e-society and ICT for democratic or social development. The Centre for E-Governance presented current projetcs in the area of OGD and Smart Cities. City University Hong Kong gave insights into study results in the area of civic online engagement. UNU presented a study on the usage of OGD by several cases in different international contexts.

Qualität von Open Data steigern

Die Zuverlässigkeit öffentlicher Services hängt von der Qualität der verwendeten Daten ab. Ziel des Projekts ADEQUATe ist der Einsatz einheitlicher Standards zur Optimierung von Open Data.

Handschriftlich ausgefüllte Anträge an die Verwaltung sind anfällig für Fehler. Bei der Übertragung in IT-Systeme kann es passieren, dass einzelne Buchstaben fehlerhaft übernommen werden. Dadurch entstehen Datenbestände, die später nur schwer automatisiert ausgewertet werden können. Aber nicht nur fehlerhafte Einträge sind Ursachen für schlechte Datenqualität. Zwischen einzelnen Verwaltungseinheiten wird die Ablage von Daten oft nicht entsprechend akkordiert. Das führt später zu Interoperabilitätsproblemen.

Die Veröffentlichung von Open Government Data zeigt deutlich Verbesserungspotentiale zur Steigerung der Qualität von Verwaltungsdaten auf. Probleme liegen beispielsweise im wechselnden Aufbau von Datensätzen. Das könnte durch den Einsatz einheitlicher Standards stark verbessert werden.

Datenqualität optimieren

Genau dort setzt ADEQUATe an. Schwerpunkt des Projekts der Donau-Uni Krems und der WU Wien ist die langfristige Verbesserung der Datenqualität offener Verwaltungsdaten. Praktisch wird das durch eine

• Identifikation bestehender Standards, der
• Schaffung von Werkzeugen, die diese Standards umsetzen, dem
• Einsatz eines Monitoring-Frameworks zur Messung der Qualität der Daten und durch
• Berichte an die Dateneigentümer

erzielt.

„Der Mehrwert offener Daten und Informationen wird sich nur dann einstellen, wenn Datennutzer/innen in die Verfügbarkeit und Qualität der Daten vertrauen können“, so Johann Höchtl vom Department für E-Governance in Wirtschaft und Verwaltung an der Donau-Universität Krems. „Als einer der Projektpartner erwarten wir uns, dass die im Rahmen des Projekts ausgearbeiteten Empfehlungen mittel- bis langfristig auch in Backend-Systeme der öffentlichen Verwaltung Einzug finden.  Das führt letztlich zu einer Steigerung der Interoperabilität.“

Dr. Johann Höchtl ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Department für E-Governance in Wirtschaft und Verwaltung an der Donau-Universität Krems und hat an der Ausarbeitung des Metadatenstandards nach welchem offenen Verwaltungsdaten in Österreich beschrieben werden, mitgewirkt. Weitere Projektpartner von ADEQUATe sind WU Wien und die Semantic Web Company.

JeDEM Issue Vol. 8 No. 1 (2016) out now!

Welcome to a summer issue that presents the most recent “ongoing submissions” to the Journal of E-Democracy and Open Government. The authors have not submitted to a particular call for papers, but have responded to the journal’s open invitation to submit a paper to JeDEM’s main topics. The papers in this issue analyse current strengths and weaknesses in Open Data, Public Sector Information (PSI) and E-Government, present results, suggest methodologies as well as ideas for yet more research and work in these areas.

Read the whole issue of JeDEM free of charge here: Vol 8, No 1 (2016)

Research Papers and Project Descriptions in this issue:

• Open Government Data and the Role of Data Infomediaries
• Sustainable Business Models for Public Sector Open Data Providers
• E-Government Development and Cluster Analysis
• The Delay of Implementation of the European Union Public Sector Information Directive in Sweden
• Success Factors of E-Government Policy Implementation in Pakistan