[AISWorld] CfP: Policy Modelling and Policy Informatics Track @ Dual IFIP EGOV and ePart 2016

[Prof. Dr. Maria A. Wimmer]

CALL FOR PAPERS – Policy Modelling and Policy Informatics Track @ dual 
IFIP EGOV and ePart 2016 – www.egov-conference.org
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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
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TRACK CHAIRS
Maria A. Wimmer (lead), University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Theresa A. Pardo, Center for Technology in Government, University at 
Albany, 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 for almost 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 have 
led 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 that different political, economic, social, human and technical 
disciplines to work together to leverage the benefits of different 
approaches of understanding and designing policy. Such efforts require 
multidisciplinary research and collaboration across disciplines. Yet, 
disciplinary tradition often keeps researchers working exclusively 
within their own disciplines developing policy models virtually 
independent from each other. To fully address these challenges, 
researchers need to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries, bringing 
together their knowledge and sharing their expertise within 
multidisciplinary collaborations. With interdisciplinary research, 
existing concepts and approaches can be combined in innovative ways to 
achieve more powerful solutions, which fulfil 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
• Modelling and simulating dynamics of social-environmental interactions
• 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 data- and 
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.

PROCEEDINGS
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.

PHD COLLOQUIUM
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

PAPER SUBMISSION
Read more about the submission guidelines and review criteria on the 
conference website: http://www.egov-conference.org/
Submission site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=egov2016

2016 DUAL CONFERENCE CHAIRS
Hans Jochen Scholl, University of Washington, USA
Marijn Janssen, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Maria A. Wimmer, University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany
Efthimios Tambouris, University of Macedonia, Greece
Tomasz Janowski, United Nations University Operating Unit on 
Policy-Driven Electronic Governance, Portugal
Delfina Sá Soares, University of Minho, Portugal