[DGOnline] DGOnline Newsletter Volume 26: July 2009

[kitsing@policy.hu]

DGOnline Newsletter
Volume 26: July 2009

The newsletter is available at http://www.dgsociety.org/newsletter_vol_26.php

Welcome to dgOnline, the electronic newsletter of the Digital 
Government Society of North America. dgOnline is a monthly summary of 
news and events of interest to the DG community.  To submit material 
for inclusion in future issues, please send email to Meelis Kitsing at 
newsletter at dgsociety.org .

In this Issue:
The White House Open Government Team Welcomes Your Comments
Conferences and Calls for Papers
Grant Opportunities and Announcements


The White House Open Government Team Welcomes Your Comments
An unusually relevant and interesting public discussion is underway 
now.  It is part of the Federal Office of Science and Technology 
Policy's (OSTP) effort to gather information about including and using 
IT in government.

The White House Open Government team (Office of Public Engagement) has 
website available at  http://www.whitehouse.gov/open.

Existing discussion are going on Transparency:
- Principles: How do we define transparency so that we can prioritize 
our policymaking? 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Principles/)
- Governance: How do we institutionalize transparency across all  
government agencies? 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Transparency-Governance/)
- Open Government Operations 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Operations/) 
and
- Data, Data.gov and Metadata 
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Discussion-Phase-Transparency-Data/)
- Report: 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Wrap-Up-of-the-Open-Government-Brainstorming-Transparency/

Participation:
- Creating More Opportunities for Citizen Participation in Government 
Decision making
- E-Democracy: New Tools and Technologies for Participation
- Web 2.0 Policy Framework
- Public Participation in Federal Rulemaking

Collaboration:
- Enhancing Online Citizen Participation Through Policy 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Enhancing-Online-Citizen-Participation-Through-Policy/)
- Achieving Better Results by Working Together 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Collaboration-Achieving-Better-Results-by-Working-Together/)
- Prizes as Incentives for Public-Private Partnerships 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Prices-as-Incentives-for-Public-Private-Partnerships/)
- Collaborative Problem Solving and Alternative Dispute Resolution

And the current discussion is soliciting thoughts on how Government can 
strike a balance between encouraging and allowing creative uses of new 
technologies, promoting public access, and ensuring that these 
technologies are implemented safely.

Access the Declassification Policy Forum at 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/ and the specific Technology  Challenges 
and Opportunities discussion at 
http://blog.ostp.gov/2009/07/09/technology-challenges-and-opportunities/

Just register (at the top right) and then you can login and make 
comments.  The easy-to-use MixedInk system (see the nice video at 
http://www.vimeo.com/2674991) helps you cut and paste from other 
people's comments to make your own personal recommendation.

Your comments are welcomed until July 19, 2009.

Do check it out!  And if you see an opportunity, please feel free to 
mention DSGNA!!


Conferences and Calls for Papers

Call for Papers: Politics of Open Source Conference
The conference will take place on May 6-7, 2010, in Amherst, 
Massachusetts and features Clay Johnson (Sunlight Labs) as one of the 
daily keynote speakers. Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) has 
made significant advances, both technically and organizationally, since 
its emergence in the mid-1980s. Over the last decade, it has moved from 
a software development approach involving mostly volunteers to a more 
complex ecology where firms, nonprofit organizations, government 
agencies and volunteers may be involved. Moreover, the production 
paradigm continues to expand to other areas of digital content (e.g., 
Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Connexions, etc.). In this conference we 
use the phrase ?open source? to capture this broader phenomenon. The 
Program Committee encourages disciplinary and interdisciplinary 
approaches to the study of open source, broadly defined.

"Politics" in the conference title, can have many interpretations. 
Political issues closely tied to the free and open source software 
movement(s) include: national government policies related to the 
adoption of open source technologies or questions related to 
interoperability and open standards, software patents, vendor lock-in, 
and copyright. These are central themes we expect may be discussed in 
this forum. In this context, we welcome international submissions since 
differences in the political perspective appear in international 
contexts. However, topics related to how the concept of openness has 
led to various interpretations, adaptations, and applications of ?open 
source? in other domains, and political issues that surround these 
broader innovations, are also welcome. More information is available at 
the conference website at http://www.umass.edu/jitp/

Call for Papers: Ronald Coase Institute Workshop on Institutional Analysis
The Institute will host a workshop on institutional analysis in Xiamen, 
China, on December 13-19, 2009. Deadline to apply is on August 7, 2009. 
The institute seeks outstanding young scholars who have not attended 
their previous workshops. More information is available at the 
following website:
http://www.coase.org/whatsnew.htm

Call for Papers for Special Issue of Electronic Government: An 
International Journal on E-Government: Past, Present, and Future
The objective of this special issue of Electronic Government journal is 
to provide an outlet for publishing original research highlighting 
current issues related to technical, organizational, managerial and 
socio economic aspects of e-Government adoption, evolution, 
implementation and impact. We seek to invite papers that address 
various aspects of e-Government projects from a theoretical, 
conceptual, or empirical perspective to set the stage for future 
research direction in e-Government. Both quantitative as well as 
qualitative studies on e-Government from developed and developing 
countries perspectives will be encouraged. To submit a paper, please 
email Dr. Vikas Jain at vjain at ut.edu.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of International Journal of E-Politics 
(IJEP) The journal is an official publication of the Information 
Resources Management Association and invites submissions to its special 
issue: on E-Democracy - Online Youth Participation and Engagement. 
Submission due date: August 15, 2009. The full call is  available at:
http://www.igi-global.com/journals/details.asp?ID=33407&v=callForPapersS

Call for Papers: Transforming Government
The journal publishes leading scholarly and practitioner research on 
the subject of transforming government through its people, processes 
and policy. Unique and progressive in its approach, the journal seeks 
to recognise both the multidisciplinary and the interdisciplinary 
perspectives of e-Government, and encourages both pure and applied 
research that impacts central and local
Government, with international perspectives also welcome. It will also 
be interested in exploring how research carried out in the private 
sector can be applied to the public sector as a means of improving 
efficiency and effectiveness. Coverage is international and focused on 
original research in e-Government ICT, service chain issues, public 
sector management, policy implications of developing environments, and 
organizational and human resource issues. To submit an article, please 
go to the journal homepage at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/tg.htm, or 
contact:
The Editor, Professor Zahir Irani, Brunel University, UK E-mail: 
Zahir.Irani at Brunel.ac.uk, or the publisher, Kelly Pycroft, E-mail: 
kpycroft at emeraldinsight.com

Call for Papers: International Journal of Electronic Governance
International Journal of Electronic Governance (IJEG) is an academic 
journal focusing on interdisciplinary issues of electronic governance 
and digital collaboration in the domains of administrative, political 
and social interaction world-wide. IJEG is published in english by 
Inderscience Publishers and all submitted manuscripts are subject to a 
double-blind review process. Full text of the IJEG inaugural and the 
second issues available from http://www.inderscience.com/ijeg

Information Polity: Call for Papers
Authors who wish to write articles for future editions of Information 
Polity are requested to submit their manuscripts electronically to the 
Editorial Assistant: Dr Alasdair Marshall, email: amar2 at gcal.ac.uk. For 
more detailed instructions please refer to the Authors Corner on the 
IOS Press website: www.iospress.nl

Grant Opportunities and Announcements

Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics
PoliticsOnline and the World eDemocracy Forum proud to announce the list
for nominations of the Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet 
and Politics. For the tenth year in a row, PoliticsOnline subscribers 
and visitors from around the world are invited to help select the top 
10 individuals, organizations and companies having the greatest impact 
on the way the Internet is changing politics.

This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, 
the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the 
toughest year ever in choosing the 25 finalists. The integration of 
politics and the Internet are reflected in this year's diverse, 
international nominees.

The winners, those top 10 nominees who receive the most votes, will be 
invited as honored guests to the world eDemocracy Forum October 8-9, in 
Issy-les-Moulineaux, (Paris, France), where they'll take part in an 
awards ceremony and other special programs throughout the two-day forum.

Please review the 26 finalists below and then select one who has had 
the greatest influence on the world of ePolitics in 2009. The 
information is available at
http://www.politicsonline.com/content/main/specialreports/2009/top10_2009/vote.asp

NSF Programs
The programs can be a good fit with certain types of digital government 
research:
Innovation and Organizational Sciences  (IOS)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5378&org=SES&from=home
Law and Social Sciences
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5422&govDel=USNSF_39
Sociology
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5369&govDel=USNSF_39
Political Science
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5418&govDel=USNSF_39
Creative IT
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09572/nsf09572.htm?govDel=USNSF_25 
Decision, Risk and Management Sciences  (DRMS)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5423&org=SES&from=home 
Science, Technology and Society
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5324&govDel=USNSF_39
Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry  (GOALI)
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13706
SBE Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13453&govDel=USNSF_50 
The full list of Social and Economic Science programs at NSF can be
found at http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?div=SES

The NSF Regional Grants Conference will take place in Jackson, MS on 
October 5 and 6.
More information is available at 
http://www.nsf.gov/events/event_summ.jsp?cntn_id=114599&govDel=USNSF_13

APSA Short Course on Coding and Blog Analysis
American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Toronto, 
Canada, will host a short course "Coding the Blogosphere: Introducing 
the Coding and Blog Analysis Toolkits" at 1-5 pm on September 2, 2009. 
The course is hosted by Dr. Stuart Shulman who is the founder of the 
Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP), which is a fee-for-service 
coding lab co-located at the University of Pittsburgh and the 
University of Massachusetts Amherst. QDAP and QDAP-UMass staff and 
coders work on coding projects funded by the National Science 
Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other 
U.S. funding agencies. He has been the Principal Investigator and 
Project Director on related National Science Foundation-funded research 
projects focusing on electronic rulemaking, human language 
technologies, manual annotation, digital citizenship, and 
service-learning efforts in the United States.

At the APSA 2009 Short Course, Dr. Shulman will lead a hands-on (your 
laptop) training introducing to the Coding Analysis Toolkit (CAT), a 
free, web-based service designed to facilitate the measurement and 
reporting the reliability and validity of work completed by multiple 
coders. He will also introduce the Blog Analysis Toolkit (BAT), which 
is also a free system designed to capture blog posts and archive them 
for analysis in CAT. For more information, please visit the following 
website :http://www.apsanet.org/media/Short%20Course%203.pdf

DGSNA Conferences in 2009-2010
The Board of DGSNA, the Digital Government Society of North America,  
has decided that the dg.o 2009 conference, originally scheduled to be 
held in Puebla, Mexico, on May 18-20, will not be held this year, due 
to fears raised by the swine flu epidemic. Although there will be no 
physical meeting this year, the conference proceedings will be 
published, and will be noted as an official publication of the DG 
Society, so that papers can be formally referenced in citations.  
Anyone already registered for the conference will receive the CD of the 
proceedings, and the proceedings will be published as usual in the ACM 
Digital Library. The local organizer team in Puebla has unanimously 
agreed to host dg.o 2010, our next conference, in Puebla next May.  It 
is a great city, and we still want to enjoy it! In addition, a smaller 
event will be held in Washington DC in November or December 2009, 
focusing on the interests of members of  the US government, and will 
include some events originally planned for the dg.o 2009 conference.  
You will receive information about this event later in the year.

EU Profiler
"EU Profiler" (www.euprofiler.eu) is arguably is the most advanced 
voting advice application (VAA) that has been ever built. It covers 30 
countries, is in 24 languages and contains 9000 coded and 
documentedpositions of 300 political parties in Europe, in view of this 
year's EP elections. Over 130 doctoral students,post-docs and 
professors all around Europe have been working on this. The group 
conceptualizing the entire endeavour comprise renowned political 
scientists such as Peter Mair, Mark Franklin, Hanspeter Kriesi, Yves 
Mény, Stefano Bartolini, Sven Steinmo and Thomas Poguntke. The 
technological development was done in collaboration with two tech 
partners (the Dutch company "kieskompas" and the Swiss "Politools" at 
the University of Zurich). The EU Profiler went live in April 2009 and 
by mid-May 2009 had 920'000 visitors and 370'000 advices were given to 
the users. The media report on it all over Europe and we are expecting 
more users over the next weeks preceding the EP elections.

Massachusetts Government Report
The Massachusetts online government transparency report is now 
available online. The ability to see how government uses the public 
purse is fundamental to democracy.  Budget transparency checks 
corruption, bolsters public confidence in government, and promotes 
fiscal responsibility. Massachusetts has only barely begun to take full 
advantage of the benefits of online transparency for government 
expenditures. Transparency 2.0 is Comprehensive, One-Stop, One-Click 
Budget Accountability and Accessibility. Link to report can be found 
at: http://www.masspirg.org/tax-budget/budget-transparency Guide for 
Evaluation of Online Engagement
Michelle Lyons at the Department for Innovation, Universities and 
Skills of the UK Government has developed a draft guide for officials 
to use when evaluating engagement activity. Ideally, this guide will 
complement existing evaluation frameworks for offline engagement 
initiatives. In the spirit of open collaboration she would like to 
invite you to contribute to the development of this guide. Scholars and 
experts can edit and comment on the content. The guide is available at 
http://interactive.dius.gov.uk/diuswiki/wiki/Evaluation_of_Online_Engagement

The EU Report on e-Government and e-Participation
European Commission, Information Society and Media Directorate General 
issued a report on e-Government and e-Participation on 10 December 
2008. The EU is investing heavily in e-government to help boost growth 
while delivering on the benefits of the information society, including 
greater cross border collaboration, less fragmented research effort, 
and access to ICT anywhere, any time and by anyone. This report 
examines how ICT is revolutionising the way citizens, businesses and 
public administrations interact. The report is available at 
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/egovernment/docs/pdf/policy-report_e-gov.pdf

Special offer: reduced subscription to Journal of Information 
Technology and Politics
The publisher Taylor & Francis is pleased to offer members of the 
Digital Government Society of North America a steeply reduced rate on 
subscriptions of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics 
(JITP), edited by Prof. Stuart Shulman.  Instead of $92/year, DGSNA  
members can obtain hardcopy issues of the journal for only $50/yr. The 
JITP website is available at http://www.jitp.net/

Special Deal for DGSNA Members: Discount on Information Polity
IOS Press, the publishers of the highly regarded journal Information 
Polity, has reached an agreement with the DGSNA Board. Individual 
members can subscribe to the journal for a discounted rate of US$75 per 
year (print copy) and US$25 per year (online copy). Student members 
receive a discounted rate of US$15 per year (online copy).  The 
journal's website is 
http://www.iospress.nl/loadtop/load.php?isbn=15701255.

New E-Governance Book Series by IOS Press
IOS Press is specialized in advanced publications in the field of 
administrative sciences. Recently, the Press started a new series named 
Global E- Governance.  The publisher maintains longstanding 
collaborations with international organisations like IIAS and NATO and 
publishes a book series Innovation and the Public Sector, edited by 
Professor Victor Bekkers. In addition they publish 3 journals: 
Information Polity, edited by Prof. John Taylor, I-Ways, edited by Mr. 
Russel Pipe, and the International Journal of Regulation and 
Governance, published with TERI (New Delhi).

A New Version of the e-Gov EndNote library
The most recent version (3.2 - July 2008) of the popular master 
reference library of e-Government related literature (predominantly 
English-language, peer reviewed) is now available for downloading at 
http://tinyurl.com/ysglpg ( 
https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/jscholl/22768 ) The 
references come as a zipped EndNote XML document for easy import into 
EndNote library versions capable of importing those documents. The 
current version contains 2,537 references. We are asking authors to 
check their entries and report on errors or omissions.

SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF)
The Social Science Research Council, with funding from the Andrew W. 
Mellon Foundation, is pleased to announce a call to faculty for 
interdisciplinary research field proposals for the 2009 Dissertation 
Proposal Development Fellowship (DPDF) program.  Established in 2006, 
the DPDF combines financial support and workshop experience for 
early-stage graduate students engaged in predissertation research and 
developing their dissertation proposals. The DPDF program is designed 
to intervene at a critical moment in the career development of graduate 
students in the humanities and social sciences by aiding their 
transition from students to researchers. It provides complementary 
interdisciplinary perspectives to students across the disciplines of 
the social sciences and humanities. Faculty applicants must be tenured 
at different doctoral degree-granting programs at US universities and 
apply in teams of two. DPDF Research Directors lead groups of 12 
graduate student fellows in two four-day workshops Research directors 
receive a stipend of $10,000 each. More information about the program 
may be found at: http://programs.ssrc.org/dpdf

Ohio State Report on Building Democracy Through Online Consultation
A report entitled, "Building Democracy Through Online Citizen 
Consultation:  A Framework for Action," has emerged from an Ohio State 
University conference of the same name.  The document is intended as a 
brief practical guide to public officials who are wondering (a) what 
e-democracy is and (b) what sorts of issues need to be considered if an 
online consultation is to be staged successfully.  Helpful nuggets in 
the report include Alexandra Samuel's hints for keeping online 
discussions on track and a summary of a discussion she led of how to 
plan such an initiative, Lars Hasselblad Torres's ideas for attracting 
and sustaining participation, Jerry Kosicki's thoughts on achieving a 
representative sample of citizen opinion, and a review of the 
respective pluses and minuses of online versus face-to-face 
consultation (although doing one does not exclude doing the other!).  
To get a copy of the report, go to 
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/pldd/initiatives.php, and click the word 
"here" at the end of the paragraph entitled, "Building Democracy 
Through Online Citizen Consultation."

NSF Report on Cyberlearning
NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning has published its report titled 
"Fosterning Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning 
Opportunity and Challenge". The report is available at the following 
website: 
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08204/nsf08204.pdf?govDel=USNSF_124 
Contact Meelis Kitsing at newsletter at dgsociety.org for questions or to 
submit material for future newsletters.

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the following website: http://www.dgsociety.org/newsletter_vol_26.php


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