[AISWorld] CFP : Policy Modelling and Policy Informatics Track - Dual IFIP EGOV and ePart Conference 2016

Tue Jan 26 06:49:41 EST 2016

CALL FOR PAPERS - Dual IFIP EGOV and ePart 2016 Policy Modelling and Policy Informatics Track - www.egov-conference.org 

The dual 15th IFIP Electronic Government and 8th e-Participation Conference (IFIP EGOV and IFIP ePart) 2016 will be held from Monday, September 5th to Thursday, September 8th, 2016 under the local auspices of the United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV, http://egov.unu.edu/) and University of Minho (http://www.uminho.pt/en), Guimarães, Portugal 

TRACK CHAIRS 
-Maria A. Wimmer (lead), University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
-Theresa Pardo, Center for Technology in Government, SUNY, USA
-Yannis Charalabidis, University of Aegean, Greece 

SCOPE
The Policy Modelling and Policy Informatics Track focuses on supporting public policy making with innovative ICT therewith involving relevant stakeholders. It heavily involves multi-disciplinary research. The scope ranges from policy analysis and conceptual modeling to programming and visualization of simulation models, to help policy makers and stakeholders deliberate and evaluate policy decisions and explore new models of governance.
Using computer simulations and decision support systems in developing, examining and explaining public policies has received a strong focus in e-government research since about a decade. With public policy we refer to decisions of governments, to governmental actions and intentions, to regulatory measures and/or funding priorities concerning a given thematic area of public concern that government is regulating. Public policy making has evolved as a domain of study supporting governments and their constituency with theories, methods, instruments and tools to analytically evaluate the past (causes, impact) and innovatively explore the future (potential effects) of a policy under consideration. Advances in simulation paradigms and in innovative ICT support as well as more active stakeholder engagement and more reliable simulation models lead to expectations of better informed governance and public policy development. The ultimate goal thereby is to make public policy making more transparent, open and collaborative.
However, the complexity encompassed with modelling public policies demands for different political, economic, social, human and technical disciplines to work together to leverage the benefits of different approaches of understanding and designing a policy. This demands for multidisciplinary research and collaboration across disciplines. Yet, traditional fragmentation between disciplines keeps researchers within their own disciplines to develop policy models almost independently from each other. To fully address these challenges, researchers need to bring together their knowledge and share their expertise within a multidisciplinary collaboration. With multi-disciplinary research, existing concepts and approaches can be combined in an innovative way to achieve more powerful solutions, which fulfill the demands of more transparent, participative, data-driven and collaborative policy making.
Areas of focus and interest include but are not limited to the following topics:
.	Foundations of policy modelling and policy informatics
.	Multi-disciplinary research and collaboration across disciplines 
.	Methods, concepts and tools for policy analysis, including data and opinion mining, mapping, simulation, aggregation, and visualisation
.	Model building based on particular simulation paradigms and supported with conceptual modelling and simulation systems
.	Model evaluation, presentation of simulation outputs and interpretation of models
.	Quality of simulation models, understandability, transparency and trustworthiness of models
.	Impact assessment and contribution of modelling and simulation to better policy making
.	Engagement of stakeholders and open collaboration in policy making
.	Modelling and simulating dynamics of social-environmental interactions
.	Decision support in the public sector through information-centric and model-based analysis of evidence
.	Designing, managing, and evaluating information systems and infrastructures for policy construction, analysis, and implementation
.	Public policy issues including modelling and simulation and use of open data and/or social media
.	Methods and solutions to manage complexity of public policy contexts
.	Technology platforms supporting different modelling paradigms and integrating advanced features of mining, modelling and simulating public policy 
.	Comparative analyses of policy cases, concepts of policy modelling etc.
.	Examples and best practices of innovative, open and collaborative public policy making
Besides the Policy Modelling and Policy Informatics Track, the dual IFIP EGOV and ePart 2016 conference also hosts tracks on "electronic government", "electronic participation", "open government and open and big data", and "smart governance, smart government smart cities and smart regions". See http://www.egov-conference.org/ for more details.

FORMATS

Across its tracks, the dual IFIP EGOV and ePart 2016 conference hosts the following formats of contributions: 

.	Completed research papers (max. 12 pages, published in the IFIP ePart proceedings of Springer LNCS) 
.	Ongoing research and innovative projects (max. 8 pages, published in alternate proceedings by a IOS Press) 

Beyond the tracks, the dual IFIP EGOV and ePart 2016 conference also hosts 
.	Poster presentations (max. 2 pages, to be exposed along the welcome reception on Tuesday evening)
.	Workshops and panels on pertinent issues (short abstracts, 2 pages), and
.	PhD colloquium submissions (max. 8 pages),
all to be included in the alternate proceedings published by IOS Press.

These formats encourage both scientific rigor and discussions of state of the art as well as innovative research approaches, work in progress, and studies of practical e-government, e-governance, e-participation or policy modelling projects along with papers on system implementations.
All accepted completed research papers will be published by Springer Verlag (two volumes of LNCS). Accepted submissions in all other categories will be published by IOS Press. After the conference, the proceeding volumes will be submitted to Thompson Reuters for evaluation in order to be indexed in Web of Science Conference Proceedings.

Prior to the conference (that is, on Sunday, 4th September), the 12th PhD student colloquium will be held providing doctoral students with an international forum guided by senior scholars for presenting their work, networking opportunities and cross-disciplinary inspiration. It will be dedicated to learning and understanding from each other. PhD research with topical threads of both conferences and the special tracks or further related topics relevant to ICT use in the public sector are welcome and can be presented. See more details under the following link:
http://www.egov-conference.org/ 

IMPORTANT DATES: 
.	March 15, 2016-Submission of papers (completed and ongoing research) 
.	April 15, 2016-Submission of workshop/panel/poster/PhD colloquium contributions 
.	April 30, 2016-Notification of acceptance/rejection decisions for papers 
.	May 15, 2016 - Notification of acceptance for workshops/panels/posters/PhD colloquium contributions 
.	May 31, 2016-Camera-ready papers of completed research, of ongoing research

SUBMISSION SITE:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=egov2016

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Dr. Yannis Charalabidis
Associate Professor, Electronic Governance 
Director, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit, Univ. of the Aegean
Head, Information Systems Laboratory
Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering 
University of the Aegean | Karlovassi, 83200 Samos, Greece
Tel: +302273082200 | email: yannisx at aegean.gr
www.charalabidis.gr | http://t-government.blogspot.com 
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