Building Knowledge Societies: From Digital Government to Digital Empowerment
Knowledge Societies empower citizens to use the facilities available through digital infrastructures to have the freedom to live their lives in the manner they want to live. Governments, civil society and private enterprises often see their role as enablers of the knowledge society by providing needed services, support and products.
Governments have overwhelmingly adopted digital means to ignite and sustain this empowerment. Responding to social, economic, political and other pressures, they use digital technology to innovate their policies, processes, structures and interactions with partners and citizens alike, and institutionalize such innovations over time. Four waves of Digital Government innovations emerged: 1) Digitization – improving internal government operations and delivering better public services, 2) Transformation – facilitating administrative and institutional reform in government, 3) Engagement – engaging citizens and non-state actors in policy- and decision-making processes and 4) Contextualization – supporting policy and development goals in specific sectors and localities. Focused on creating conditions for self-governance and self-development on the local, sectorial and national levels, the Contextualization stage is directly relevant to Knowledge Societies.
The challenges facing researchers and practitioners today have to do with ensuring that the digitalization in society leads to transformation and empowerment, and finally to positive, sustained development outcomes. Policy makers and decision makers in government have to understand and deal with a whole host of issues related to building Knowledge Societies, and this call-for-papers highlights many of these issues. The main purpose of ICEGOV2017 is to explore how Digital Government can lead to Digital Empowerment, relying on locally-appropriated Knowledge Societies as both the means and the end to such empowerment.
The ICEGOV series brings together academia, governments, international organizations, civil society, and the private sector to share the insights and experiences in theory and practice of Digital Government. ICEGOV promotes interactions between stakeholders – policymakers, government officials, elected representatives, researchers, innovators and educators from developing and developed countries – all sharing a concern that public investment in Digital Government advances public policy and development. ICEGOV is a platform where such stakeholders can discuss ways of working together across the national, sectorial, development and other boarders towards addressing this concern.
Following the earlier conferences in Macau (ICEGOV2007), Cairo (ICEGOV2008), Bogotá (ICEGOV2009), Beijing (ICEGOV2010), Tallinn (ICEGOV2011), Albany (ICEGOV2012), Seoul (ICEGOV2013), Guimarães (ICEGOV2014) and Montevideo (ICEGOV2016), the ICEGOV series has become a source of significant research and policy insight, able to reach national and global policy and research audiences. In figures, the ICEGOV community includes 1548 authors and reviewer from 102 countries – 69% from academia, 18% from government, 9% from industry and 4% from international and other organization. Also, on average, every ICEGOV conference attracts 140 submissions from 49 countries and is attended by over 400 participants from 50 countries including government (40%), academia (36%), industry and civil society (14%), and international organizations (10%).
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