[DGOnline] DGOnline Newsletter Volume 32: January 2010

[kitsing@policy.hu]

DGOnline Newsletter
Volume 32: January 2010

The Newsletter is available at http://www.dgsociety.org/newsletter_vol_32.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:
Goodbye Message from the DGSNA President
Conferences and Calls for Papers
Grant Opportunities and Announcements

Goodbye Message from the DGSNA President

Dear member of the Digital Government Society of North America!

Happy new year!  I hope you have had an enjoyable break and are looking 
forward to a fun and productive 2010. I write to inform you of the 
current status of the DGSNA and to introduce your new President, Prof. 
Jochen Scholl.

DGSNA News
2009 was a rather difficult year for DGNSA.  The Swine Flu scare caused 
us to cancel the dg.o 2009 conference, which meant that we lost 
interpersonal momentum as well as the income so necessary for the 
Society to survive.  Fortunately, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of 
our Treasurer Yigal Arens, we have the wherewithal to mount dg.o 2010, 
and preparations are well in hand.

dg.o 2010 http://www.dgo2010.org/ promises to be a very interesting 
conference, and will take place on May 17-20 in Puebla, Mexico, a 
wonderful setting and World Heritage Site.  See Wikipedia at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puebla,_Puebla.   We hope that you will be 
able to attend!

We have ongoing agreements with several journals, and continue to offer 
members subscription discounts.  Please see the website.
The DGSNA Board and several additional people met for two days in 
Washington DC in December.   On the first day, we held a Leadership 
Retreat, at which the most pressing issues facing the Society were 
discussed, and several new directions of activity outlined.  You might 
already have noticed new additions to our website at 
http://www.dgsna.org, notably:
- a list of Curricula for teaching DG
- the beginnings of a Yellow Pages of DG expertise
- a new Special Interest Group page
May I invite you to contact me with pertinent information on any of 
these three topics, if you have something to contribute?

The second day in Washington was devoted to connecting with people from 
the General Services Administration and other offices in the US 
government, and featured talks by various government people and 
specially invited DG researchers.  This was organized by Board members 
Theresa Pardo and John Bertot.

During 2009, Larry Brandt, our untiring advocate and research program 
manager at the National Science Foundation, retired.  He is now 
freelancing as a consultant on DG matters, and we wish him well.

US Government news
Digital Government is on the rise!  The Obama Administration is very 
actively pursuing digital governance. Its Office of Science and 
Technology Policy http://blog.ostp.gov/ has an active blog site on 
which various interesting issues are discussed.

Prof. Beth Noveck, s DGSNA member, is the United States deputy chief 
technology officer for open government and leads President Obama's Open 
Government Initiative.  Read about her at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Simone_Noveck.

New DGSNA Board
In November and December, as required by the DGSNA Constitution, we 
held an election for the new Board.  As announced, the new board is 
larger than the outgoing one, and includes the following members:

President:
  Jochen Scholl, University of Washington, Seattle
President-elect:
  John Bertot, University of Maryland at College Park
Treasurer:
  Yigal Arens, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute
Secretary:
  Andrea Kavanaugh, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg
Past President:
  Eduard Hovy, University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute
Board members:
  Ramon Gil-Garcia, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico
  Norman Jacknis, Director, Cisco IBSG Public Sector Group, New York
  Luis Luna-Reyes, Universidad de las Americas-Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
  Theresa Pardo, Center for Technology in Government at the University 
of Albany
  Andrew Philpot, University of Southern California Information 
Sciences Institute
  Rejean Roy, CEFRIO, Montreal, Quebec
  Norm Sondheimer, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
  Christine Williams, Bentley University, Massachusetts

I would like to congratulate all the electees and wish them a very 
enjoyable and effective two-year tenure.

Outgoing Board
I would like to thank the outgoing Board for their enthusiasm and 
willingness to help, each in their own way, during the past two years.  
  Specifically, I would like to thank Judy Cushing, Evergreen College 
and Sharon Dawes, retired from Center for Technology in Government at 
the University of Albany

One of Judy's special areas of concern was student affairs, and her 
devotion and enthusiasm will be missed on the Board.  Thank you, Judy!

Sharon, as Past President and one of the pillars of the DGSNA, needs no 
introduction, of course.  She has spent more time and effort than 
almost everyone else combined on setting up the Society and making it 
run.  Sharon, your humor, expertise, connections, and delicate yet 
effective way of cutting through difficult issues is unparalleled, and 
we hope that you will continue to work within DGSNA for a long time to 
come.  Thank you very much for all your service!

And finally, I would like to introduce your new President.  Prof. 
Jochen Scholl http://faculty.washington.edu/jscholl/ from the 
Information School of the University of Washington in Seattle has been 
a very active proponent and supporter of DG both in the US and abroad.  
He is known for his comprehensive studies of how DG is growing along 
all dimensions and how it is becoming a real field of research.  He is 
one of the founders and leading lights of the DG Track in the HICCS 
conference series in Hawaii every January.  He has very strong ties to 
eGovernment and DG in Europe, and is an effective communicator between 
the various DG constituencies in North America. I know we will have an 
interesting and very fruitful period under his leadership.

It has been my great pleasure serving the Society the past two years.
Warmest regards,
Eduard Hovy
Past President, DGSNA


Conferences and Calls for Papers

EGES conference at WCC 2010
The E-Government and E-Services (EGES) conference will take place on 
September 20-23, 2010  at Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, 
Australia is a cooperation of a number of groups that already have 
well-established activities in the field of e-government, e-governance, 
e-business, e-tcetera. Notably, IFIP working group 8.5 (Information 
Systems in Public Administration) and IFIP working group 6.11 
(Communication Aspects of E-Business, E-services and E-society) and the 
CSI SIG on E-Governance (Computer Society of India Special Interest 
Group on E-Governance) have joined forces as the program co-chairs to 
make this stream of the IFIP World Computer Congress indeed outstanding 
and challenging. A ?must attend? meeting opportunity for researchers, 
practitioners and policymakers where contributions from all three 
angles will lead to new perspectives and a better understanding of the 
challenges and opportunities that come with developing and implementing 
e-government services and applications.  For details see: 
http://www.wcc2010.com/eges

EGOV 2010
The IFIP e-government conference (EGOV 2010) will take place in 
Lausanne, Switzerland on August 29 - September 2, 2010. The conference 
brings together leading researchers and professionals from across the 
globe and from a number of disciplines. Over the years, the interest in 
this domain of study has steadily increased. The 2009 EGOV conference - 
within the DEXA conference cluster - has attracted more than 130 
participants from 32 countries including developing countries, with 35 
contributions in completed research, 25 contributions in ongoing 
research, 7 projects contributions and 3 workshops. eGovernment 
research has demonstrated its relevance to practice and consequently 
has influenced and even shaped government strategies and 
implementations. Conversely, eGovernment practice has inspired 
eGovernment research. A wide range of topics has received scholarly 
attention. In recent years, the assessment and evaluation of 
eGovernment projects, the foundations of eGovernment as a research 
discipline, integration and interoperation in government, and the role 
of information and communication technology for development rank among 
leading topics on the research agenda. More information is available at 
http://www.egov-conference.org/egov-2010

Call for Papers: dg.o 2010
The 11th International Digital Government Research Conference (dg.o 
2010) will take place on May 17-20, 2009 in Puebla Mexico. The dg.o 
meetings are an established forum for the presentation, discussion and 
demonstration of interdisciplinary digital government research, 
technology innovation, and applications. Each year the conference 
combines: presentations of effective partnerships among government 
professionals, university researchers, relevant businesses, and NGOs, 
as well as grassroots citizen groups, to advance the practice of 
digital government and research on digital government as an 
interdisciplinary domain that lies at the intersections of computing 
research, social and behavioral science research, and the problems and 
missions of government.

The dg.o 2010 conference theme "Public Administration Online: 
Opportunities and Challenges" focuses on open government, information 
sharing, interoperability, distributed collaboration, and massive 
intelligence in government areas, as well as Web 2.0, and cloud 
computing. The theme encompasses issues related to the capabilities to 
be provided by such environments; user interactions and experiences 
with such online Digital Government resources and environments; and, 
the technical infrastructure needed to support such environments. 
Topics in Web 2.0 technologies, online collaboration environments, user 
adoption and adaptation, and use of cloud computing to support such 
environments are all relevant and pose interesting scientific 
questions. At the same time, governments around the world are being 
confronted with incredible challenges in privacy and policy issues, 
even as there are trends and pressures to make these data accessible 
via more platforms, e.g. mobile devices. An additional important focus 
area of the conference is on policy issues related to the above topics. 
More information is available at http://www.dgo2010.org

EGOVIS 2010
The conference will take place in Bilbao, Spain on August 30-September 
3, 2010 and features invited talksby Trevor Bench-Capon, University of 
Liverpool, UK,  with tentative title: ?We Can Work It Out: 
Argumentation techniques for e-particpation" and Roland Traunmüller, 
University of Linz, Austria, with title: ?Web 2.0 Applications create a 
new Government?. The international conference EGOVIS represents a 
continuous sequel of the 8th International Conference EGOV in 
conjunction with DEXA, which focuses on information systems aspects of 
e-government. Information systems are a core enabler  for electronic 
government/governance with all its dimensions: e-administration, 
e-democracy, e-participation and e voting. For paper registration and 
electronic submission see http://confdriver.ifs.tuwien.ac.at/

EDem10
The 4th International Conference on eDemocracy (EDem10) will take place 
on May 6-7, 2010, at Danube University in Krems, Austria. Scientific 
eDemocracy visions and models have been developed since the 1960s, but 
it is now, during the first decade of the 21st Century, that they are 
becoming reality, being tested and implemented. Extensive IT provides 
the necessary basis, but it is not the developments in IT alone that 
are responsible for successful eDemocracy projects - it is due all 
those who use and apply them, as they adopt new behaviours and change 
old ones. The new, digital generation lives and breathes new values: 
they collaborate, compile content together, share their ideas, create 
networks on social platforms and organise themselves quickly and 
simply. The new values held, the new behaviours adopted, the changed 
mindset, along with improved usability and a still-increasing use of 
the internet, has led to a rapid and radical change in our society. We 
would like to invite individuals from academic, applied and 
practitioner backgrounds as well as public administration offices, 
public bodies, NGO/NPOs, education institutions and independent 
organisations to submit their research and project papers. More 
information is available at http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/edem

Politics of Open Source
The conference will take place on May 6-7, 2010, in Amherst, 
Massachusetts. The conference features Eric von Hippel is Professor and 
Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Sloan School 
of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Fellow 
at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School 
and Clay Johnson (Sunlight Labs) as 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/

WikiSym 2010
WikiSym, the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, 
will be held on July 7-9, 2010, in Gdansk, Poland. Starting this year, 
WikiSym aims to explicitly broaden its scope, exploring not only the 
thriving wiki community, but also other open movements and open 
collaboration initiatives. This includes related areas such as open 
online communities, collaborative creation of multimedia content (with 
or without wikis), and open journalism and publishing, just to list a 
few examples. Furthermore, our goal is to establish WikiSym as a venue 
for the exchange of information, experiences and practices among an 
interdisciplinary audience, including researchers, practitioners, 
industry representatives and experts with a wide variety of different 
backgrounds. More information is available at http://wikisym.org/ws2010

The 9th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2010)
The conference will take place on June 13-15, 2010,  in Athens, Greece. 
The Mobile Government Track at ICMB is seeking quality submission on 
the various aspects of mobile business in government. Mobilizing the 
Business of Government can be seen as a direct outgrowth of digitizing 
the business of government (also known as Digital Government, or 
e-Government). Under the new mobility paradigm and regardless of the 
sector (public or private), human actors expect to be able to satisfy 
their information and electronic transaction needs (combined 
data/voice) at any time and at any place. For the public sector this 
shift has numerous and challenging implications, but also holds 
promises of huge productivity gains and ubiquitous service availability 
in unprecedented ways. The Mobile Government Track is intended to 
showcase and discuss current practices, applications, opportunities, 
and unique challenges in mobile public-sector services, government 
field force automation, and mobile ICT-enabled disaster and emergency 
response management among other areas of mobile business in government. 
The track is also intended to pave the path towards a comprehensive 
research agenda on mobile government. More information is available at 
http://www.mbusiness2010.org

Call for Papers: The 8th annual Eastern European eGov Days
The days will be held on 21-23 April 2010 in Prague, Czech Republic and 
titled "Changing Concepts & eGovernment as a Service. The event is 
jointly organised by: Forum e|Government / OCG-Austrian Computer 
Society, Vienna (AT) and EPMA/Vysocina Region (CZ) with partners. The 
annual Eastern European e|Gov Days has become a recognised platform for 
dialogue and knowledge transfer between Western and Eastern European 
countries. This event brings together over  200 professionals from the 
private and public sector in a lively exchange of experience and ideas 
and real life examples. More information is available at 
http://www.epma.cz/eeegov-days.html>http://www.epma.cz/eeegov-days.html

JOEUC Special Issue Proposals on E-government
The research in the e-government area has exploded over the last decade 
or so. Journal of Organizational and End User Computing (JOEUC) invites 
special issue proposals from well-published scholars for a special 
issue on e-government.  We are especially interested in theoretically 
grounded empirical research that emphasizes citizens' interactions with 
e-government.  If you are interested, please send a proposal to the 
editor Adam Mahmood at mmahmood at utep.edu

Call for Papers: Public Knowledge Public Knowledge is an 
interdisciplinary student-run electronic journal hosted by the Center 
for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech (ISSN 1948-3511).  
As an electronic journal, Public Knowledge uses a variety of 
communication technologies to create a conversation about the questions 
and topics raised. Issues contain scholarly refereed articles as well 
as book reviews, essays, interviews and other works utilizing a variety 
of media. The next issue will be published in May 2010. Public 
Knowledge seeks articles, book reviews, essays, interviews and 
multimedia submissions for its next issue on the topicPublic 
Information in a Democracy. As scholars and citizens, we are constantly 
inundated with information that we must sort, evaluate, and perhaps use 
in our work and our daily lives. Public information comes to us from 
all areas of life - interactions with other people, television, radio, 
internet - and we must use our faculties to dig through the mass of 
information to help organize and synthesize all that we experience.  
Furthermore, shifting definitions of the public and the private mean 
that formerly private information may now be considered public.  In 
this upcoming issue, we seek to explore this concept of (mass) public 
information. Deadline for refereed articles: February 12, 2010. All 
other, non-peer reviewed submissions (multimedia pieces, blogs, 
response essays, etc) are due March 31, 2010. You can also turn in 
response pieces throughout the life of the journal issue - up to 6 
months.This schedule helps invigorate the conversation throughout the 
issue?s lifespan. For more information about publishing in Public 
Knowledge and to upload your submissions, please visit our website at 
www.pkjournal.org and follow through to the Submissions site.

Call for Papers: Regulation & Governance
This relatively new journal is about to enter its fourth year with a 
high reputation, high impact factor,  high turn out of submissions (47 
days on average between submission and decision) and no backlogs of 
papers. See more at the Journal's website: 
http://www.wiley.com/bw/journal.asp?ref=1748-5983

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

2010 iGov Research Institute  The Center for Technology in Government 
at the University at Albany is pleased to announce the 2010 iGov 
Research Institute held in the Netherlands, from July 18-25, 2010.  
Supported by the US National Science Foundation, the Institute was 
created for doctoral students from around the world who are interested 
in the impacts of information and communication technologies on 
government and governance. The iGov Institute includes both academic 
sessions and practical field work and is organized around the 
experiences of a city or region using advanced information policies and 
technologies for economic, cultural, and social benefits. The faculty 
team comprises internationally known researchers as well as senior 
government officials. This year our field venue is The Hague in the 
Netherlands.  Our local university partner and residential location is 
TU Delft. For more details about the program design, please read 
summaries http://www.ctg.albany.edu/institute?sub=past  of programs 
from previous years. The 2010 iGov application submission deadline is 
March 15, 2010. To learn more and to apply, please visit the institute 
website http://www.ctg.albany.edu/institute .

Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford
Professors Joshua Cohen, Larry Diamond and Terry Winograd founded the 
Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford University in 2009. The 
purpose of the Program is to understand how (and to what extent) 
various information technologies and their applications -- including 
mobile phones, text messaging (SMS), the Internet, blogging, GPS, and 
other forms of digital technology -- are enabling citizens to advance 
freedom, development, social justice, and the rule of law.  The program 
lies at the intersection of social science, computer science, and 
engineering and thus focuses not only on conducting research but also 
on fostering the design of new technologies to achieve these ends.
This year, the Program has made the decision to expand its mailing list 
beyond members of the Stanford community.  While we post information on 
events in the bay area, we also share information such as news and jobs 
that may be of interest to the larger community. Please contact Yosem 
Companys at ycompanys at gmail.com for more information.

Open Government Directions Blog
AmericaSpeaks has just launched called Open Government Directions at 
http://www.opengovernmentdirections.org The blog will be a resource for 
those who care about theOpen Government Directive and creating a more 
participatory and collaborative government. Thus far it includes four 
kinds of resources:
1) Several thought pieces 
http://opengovernmentdirections.org/resources/ that we have written 
about best practices in open government, as well as links to resources 
that others have written. Specifically, we have written a few 
interesting pieces on key questions that agencies should ask before 
launching an online dialogue as well as recommendations for what 
agencies should include in their open government web sites. These will 
be regularly updated and added to.
2) Online dialogues about best practices in online engagement using 
Idea Scale http://opengovernmentdirections.ideascale.com/ and Mixed Ink 
http://opengovernmentdirections.org/mixed-ink/
3) A newsfeed http://opengovernmentdirections.org/ with links to new 
stories and articles about Open Government
4) And links to specific elements of the Open Government Directive 
http://opengovernmentdirections.org/open_gov/

The e-Government EndNote Reference Library has been updated to Rev 5.0 
The Digital Government Society makes available to members and 
non-members version 5.0 (May 2009) of the E-Government Master Library 
in EndNote TM (Version X2) XML format or a Package Version in 
ZIPformat. The library currently contains 3,090 references of 
predominantly English language, peer reviewed work. The library has 
been cleaned, and some 300 references were removed, since they did not 
meet the inclusion criteria or were undetected duplicates. The library 
now contains 3,090 entries, a net increase of 21.79 % over version 3.2 
(July 2008). We continued detecting older work, which has been added. 
Also, 345 entries (11.16 %) published in 2008 were included. In order 
to download the library,please register yourself and accept the GPL 
license agreement. We provide the reference in EndNote XML or as a 
zippedPackage Lib, so that they can be imported by various EndNote 
versions. For the XML v ersion, please use the EndNote IMPORT function 
(select EndNote XML document). Click here to access the EndNote Library

The Journal of E-Governance
IOS Press announces a change in the journal title I-Ways - Journal of 
E-Governance and Regulation (ISSN 1084-4678). Since the focus of the 
journal is increasingly on advancements in e-governance, it has been 
decided that the name of the journal will change to Journal of 
E-Governance (ISSN 1878-7681), beginning with the first quarter of 
2010. The Journal of E-Governance is dedicated to publishing facts and 
analyses on strategic developments and opinions of leading commentators 
on economy, policy, regulation, technology and applications of 
electronic government services through the Internet, broadband and 
other communications networks. The ICT infrastructure and services 
required for the delivery of e governance benefits, as well as 
accompanying applications and reforms in administrative practices, will 
be major features of the journal. While the focus of news and articles 
describing e-governance programs will be worldwide, there is a 
consensus by most national governments, international organizations, 
non governmental bodies and others involved in economic and social 
development that e-governance represents the most cost-effective and 
efficient process to pursue in developing countries to accelerate 
economic development as well as progressive democratic institutions. In 
addition to national and municipal e-governance programs, the work of a 
number of intergovernmental organizations, including the World Bank, 
the European Union, the UN Development Program and OECD will be 
reported on regularly. More information is available at
http://www.iospress.nl/loadtop/load.php?isbn=18787673

Policy & Internet
The Policy Studies Organization (PSO), the Oxford Internet Institute 
(OII), and Berkeley Electronic Press are proud to announce Policy & 
Internet: the first major peer-reviewed journal investigating the 
implications of the Internet and associated technologies for public 
policy. The Internet is now the most important international medium of 
communication and information exchange, embedded in interactions 
between citizens, firms, governments and NGOs, and bringing with it new 
practices, norms and structures. The societal shift enabled by the 
Internet has major implications for public policy in all sectors, 
requiring rigorous empirical investigation, theoretical development and 
methodological innovation across academic disciplines. Policy & 
Internet is the first journal to fill a crucial gap in policy knowledge 
and research. It will be the premier venue for scholars and researchers 
to set the public policy agenda in the digital era. More information is 
available at http://www.psocommons.org/policyandinternet/

Free Public Comment Analysis Toolkit Launched at UMass Amherst
Researchers in the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at the 
University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Pittsburgh 
have launched a free, Web-based beta version of the Public Comment 
Analysis Toolkit (PCAT) to assist government agencies in searching, 
analyzing, and responding to citizen comments submitted through federal 
regulatory sites like www.regulations.gov. The software research and 
development was funded by the National Science Foundation, the 
Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. 
To test PCAT, visit http://pcat-test.qdap.net. The next training will 
take place on Friday, February 12, at 9:00 - 11:00 am at Columbia Law 
School, Jerome Greene building, room #107. Map: 
http://www.columbia.edu/about_columbia/map/greene.html

ParticipateDB
ParticipateDB is a nifty little directory of online tools for public 
participation. The site went live on
September 15, 2009 and is currently in closed alpha. Take a sneak peek 
at our initial round of 25 tools
and 10 projects. The website is http://participatedb.com/

Call for Proposals for Transparency and Democracy Websites
mySociety has teamed up with the Open Society Institute 
http://www.soros.org/ (OSI) to help people in Central and Eastern 
Europe build transparency and democracy websites suited to the needs 
and realitiesof their countries. In the UK mySociety runs a variety of 
sites such as http://www.theyworkforyou.com and our Freedom of 
Information website http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/. As a result of 
running these, we know that there are lots of people outside the UK 
longing to build similar sites that help increase transparency and 
accountability in their own government institutions. We have now 
launched a Call for Proposals for participants in Central and Eastern 
Europe, similar to the one we recently ran in the UK cee.mysociety.org .

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

Disclosure of White House Visitor Access Records Online
In September President Barack Obama took another important step toward 
a more open  and transparent government by announcing a historic new 
policy to  voluntarily disclose White House visitor access records.  
Each  month, records of visitors from the previous 90-120 days will be  
made available online. 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Opening-up-the-peoples-house

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).

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

The Newsletter is available at http://www.dgsociety.org/newsletter_vol_32.php

Please follow DGSNA on Twitter at twitter.com/DGSociety

Contact Meelis Kitsing at newsletter at dgsociety.org for questions or to 
submit material for future newsletters.

Subscribe to our mailing list to receive future issues of dgOnline.
~-~