[liberationtech] (CFP) Innovations in digital government

[Zach Bastick]

Hi everyone,
We are hosting a track at the next International Conference on Digital
Government Research that I think is really relevant to the interests of
this list. I know that a lot of you are working on liberatory ideas that
mix technology with government (or governance), and so I would love to
invite you to contribute a paper to our track. The call for papers is
below, but if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me by
email. It would be really great to get some members of this list involved.
Thanks!
Zach



CALL FOR PAPERS

Beyond Bureaucracy: Participatory online politics and the future of
e-democracy
Track chairs: Zach Bastick (ESPOL) and Alois Paulin (Siemens)
Track 6, 22nd Annual International Conference on Digital Government
Research (DG.O 2021)
June 9-11, 2021, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Description:

We invite papers that explore innovations in digital politics and
government that place the citizen at the center of governance. While
traditional lines of inquiry at the intersection of politics and technology
focus on enhancing or supporting existing political institutions, there is
an underexplored opportunity for citizens to use technology to control
government more directly. Internet optimists have long anticipated new,
digital models of self-governance. These include representative, direct,
liquid, and anarchic models. On the other hand, critics have argued that
technology cannot safely or desirably support greater citizen involvement.
This track serves to explore these more futuristic potentials of technology
for governance.

The track covers all aspects of direct, futuristic, radical, exploratory,
and critical approaches to digital governance. These include the
(un)desirability of using technology to support self-governance; challenges
to self-governance through technology; theoretical and empirical proposals;
assessments of technologies to support models of governance (AI, IoT,
blockchain, 5G, platforms); the impact of developing digital phenomena on
self-governance (misinformation, bots, digital collective intelligence);
and the ethical, technological, social, and political implications of
existing and potential future models of public governance. In short, the
track is specifically interested in how the latest technological
developments and theories can enable new or renewed political structures
and processes.

More generally, we will explore questions such as: What might a digital
political future look like? How might we control or steer providers of
societal functions and deliver societal functions through technology? How
can digital governance occur collaboratively and enable public values to
emerge? What digital issues should policymakers, platforms, designers,
internet users and citizens consider when imagining the future of democracy?

Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):
    Algorithmic governance and politics
    Artificial Intelligence (AI) and policymaking
    Governance of online communities and virtual organizations
    Collaborative, community-led or inclusive online government
    Human, crowd, and machine intelligence in the service of democracy
    Governance and bots, misinformation, and algorithmic obscurity
    The (un)desirability of governance through technology
    Representative democracy, liquid democracy, crypto-anarchism, direct
democracy
    Ethics and morals in digital governance
    Participatory budgeting
    Collaborative, bottom-up or grass-roots digital responses to COVID-19

We solicit papers on a wide range of perspectives and approaches and
encourage both theoretical and empirical contributions. Papers are to be
submitted at the following website by January 20, 2021:
http://dgsociety.org/dgo-2021/call-for-proposals/

Dr. Zach Bastick
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ghserv.net/pipermail/lt/attachments/20201108/b1967f8f/attachment.html>