[AISWorld] Call for submission - preECIS workshop on Platformization in the public sector

[Miria Grisot]

(Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement)
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Please visit: http://www.platformization.org/

The organizers of this pre-ECIS workshop welcomes you to submit Research-In-Progress work on Public Sector Platforms.
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ECIS Workshop 2018
June 25th, Portsmouth, UK
Call for Research In Progress - deadline April 04th, 2018
See the webpage for further details:
http://www.platformization.org/
Submit to: submit at platformization.org
Organizers:
Margunn Aanestad, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Miria Grisot, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Tomas Lindroth, Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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About the Workshop
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Platformization in the Public Sector:
This workshop targets digital infrastructures in the public sector and focuses on the emergence of platforms as a distinct technological and organizational form. The platform ecosystem has emerged as a dominant technological form for global innovative organizations (Baldwin and Woodward, 2009; Tiwana, 2013). It represents the current “best practice” to deal with the complexity of digital infrastructures as well as to leverage dynamics of multi-sided markets and exploit network effects. Platforms are adaptable, scalable and extensible to many other parties and represent an alternative to an integrated collection of “silo systems”.

Public sector organizations around Europe are introducing platforms as part of their digital strategies, but we still have a limited understanding of the challenges associated with establishing platforms in the public sector (Fishenden & Thompson, 2013; Brown et al., 2017). Current research has mainly addressed platforms in the commercial sector (Parker et al., 2016). While the insights from this existing research are highly relevant, there are also important areas where the digital infrastructures can be expected to differ: The technical, regulatory and organisational complexity in the public sector is much higher than for commercial platforms. Multiple different public sector organisations at different government levels are involved in information flows and data custody. The development of national and regional solutions is usually undertaken as joint endeavour between public and private actors, to stimulate socio- economic benefits and innovation, involving a diverse portfolio of systems and registers. Furthermore, the role of the citizens not as mere service recipients but as contributors and co- creators is becoming more central while security concerns, government ́s responsibility for citizens ́ privacy and citizens ́ demand for transparent use of data are rising (Linders, 2012; Nam, 2012).

In addition, the business models of a public sector platform will be different (Bygstad & D’Silva, 2015). The network effects of platform ecosystems (i.e. the self-reinforcing process where more customers trigger more suppliers, which attracts more customers, and so on) may be facilitated in public sector platforms but towards different aims than the ones found in market situation. Monetising network effects is not a key interest for public sector platforms but rather, leveraging network effects for mobilising more resources from inside and outside public organisations and triggering decentralised innovation is a key interest (Vassilakopoulou et al., 2017). Network effects that can contribute to better synergizing rather than competing are of interest in the public sector domain and need to be better understood.

This workshop seeks to address this lack of theorizing specifically to these concerns. The themes include but are not limited to:

Business models of a public-sector platform
The network effects of public sector platforms
Network effects of synergizing rather than competing in the public sector domain
How platforms shift work practices of public sector professionals with the inclusion of citizens
Empirical studies of platformization, including the gradual process of establishing a platform
How technical and organizational structures and governance regimes shape and are shaped by thespecific public sector context
The role of the citizens not as mere service recipients but as contributors and co-creators
Security concerns, government ́s responsibility for citizens ́ privacy and citizens ́ demand fortransparent use of data
Identify core requirements for a platformization strategy that may increase sustainability of public sector platforms
Develop theory of public sector platforms that is attentive to the technical, regulatory and organizational specificity of this context
Develop process theory on “platformization” that describes key steps and core challenges in the building of platforms and surrounding eco-system
Develop theory on the interdependencies between architectural (technical) design, organizational forms, and governance regimes

We seek to contribute to the research as indicated above, and to formulate insights on how public sector platform and surrounding ecosystems develop, can be studied, designed, and theorized.

Plan for publications:
In parallel with the consideration of this proposal we have initiated an application to a relevant IS journal for a special issue on the topic of platforms in the public sector.


http://www.platformization.org/

References:
Baldwin, C., and Woodard, C. J. 2009. “The Architecture of Platforms: A Unified View,” in Platforms, Markets and Innovation, A. Gawer (ed.). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Brown, A., Fishenden, J., Thompson, M., & Venters, W. (2017). Appraising the impact and role of platform models and Government as a Platform (GaaP) in UK Government public service reform: towards a Platform Assessment Framework (PAF). Government Information Quarterly.

Bygstad, B., & D’Silva, F. (2015). Government as a platform: a historical and architectural analysis. In NOKOBIT (Norsk konferanse for organisasjoners bruk av IT), 2015.

Fishenden, J and Thompson, M. (2013), Digital government, open architecture, and innovation: why public sector IT will never be the same again, Journal of public administration research and theory, 23 (4), 977-1004.

Linders, D. (2012), From E-Government to We-Government: Defining a Typology for Citizen Coproduction in the Age of Social Media, Government Information Quarterly, 29 (4), 446-454.

Nam, T. (2012), Suggesting frameworks of citizen-sourcing via Government 2.0, Government Information Quarterly, 29 (1), 12-20.

Parker, G. G., Van Alstyne, M. W., & Choudary, S. P. (2016). Platform revolution. How networked markets are transforming the economy and how to make them work for you. WW Norton & Company.

Tiwana, A. (2013), Platform ecosystems: aligning architecture, governance, and strategy. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Vassilakopoulou P., Grisot M., Jensen TB., Sellberg N., Eltes J., Thorseng AA, and Aanestad M. (2017) Building National eHealth Platforms: the Challenge of Inclusiveness, Thirty Eighth International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2017, South Korea.



regards,


Miria Grisot

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Researcher, Department of Informatics - University of Oslo
Associate Professor, Department of Technology - Westerdals Oslo School of Arts,
Communication and Technology,
Norway