Online conference «Digital Governance and Public Administration: Interdisciplinary Insights from research»

September 26^th, 2024

Zoom format

In recent decades, the world has been experiencing extensive digital transformations. Often described as the fourth transformative industrial revolution in human history (Awan, Sroufe, & Shabhaz, 2021), this process is intensifying and accelerating every year. It abounds with sophisticated technological innovations and information society platforms, which have dramatically altered many aspects of modern life, triggering philosophical discourse and empirical research regarding its long-term implications and future directions (e.g., Asgarkhani, 2005; Gil-Garcia, Dawns, & Pardo, 2018). Governments and public administrations also play a major role in this revolution, financing many of these initiatives, regulating their emergence and operation, and using their outcomes in a variety of domains (Coglianese & Lehr, 2017; Dunleavy et al., 2008). In that vein, government-citizen relationships take new directions, advancing towards smart governance (Schedler et al., 2019) and intensifying the adoption of innovative digital tools and technologies aimed at improving public sector performance (Berman, 2021; Christensen & Lægreid, 2022).

These and other challenges have interdisciplinary roots and implications and the progress in this field is mounting. We maintain that digitization in public administration, management and governance has advanced considerably over the years. Several waves of development profoundly transformed the field and created a highly sophisticated and technological-based managerial culture. This transformation infuses new ideas about algorithm and machine-based reforms, progress based on interdisciplinary knowledge and technological advancement, and a strong orientation towards IT/ICT and big data sources. We experience faster and more extensive transfer of data among stakeholders, especially between citizens as end-users and bureaucracies, but also within governance agencies. More recently, ideas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the metaverse have also become more prevalent in public administration, public management, and governance studies (e.g., Etscheid, 2019; Hudson‐Smith, 2022) and has the potential to promote additional waves of changes. Undoubtedly, digitization has become the greatest power multiplier of the public interest over a relatively short period of only a few decades. It plays a major role in redefining theoretical boundaries of the discipline and in advancing practical ideas for building stronger nations (Vigoda-Gadot, 2009, 204–5). Above all, it has planted the seeds of a profound cultural and value change in public organizations and government responsibilities.

This virtual conference aims at looking more closely into some of these changes and tries to provide multiple perspectives on the developments in digital public administration and governance. 

Each session will take around 1 hour and 30 minutes with Q&A. The audience will be invited to take an active part by proposing comments and suggestions. We expect that this unique conference may help in better analyzing relevant and interdisciplinary problems in digital transformation in PA and set a potential future research agenda for the field. This agenda may include, but is not limited to, (1) development of new concepts related with digital transformation in governance both on national and municipal levels, (2) introducing major questions and models, (3) suggesting core variables and their potential interrelations, and finally (4) proposing directions to trace the answers using a variety of methodologies and research designs.

We kindly ask you to provide brief talking points with the key issues of your report by email estyrin@hse.ru. They should contain the title, authors’ names, affiliations, short list of bibliography used. 

We will publish the summary of the reports on the Laboratory official web site. 

Conference Organizers:

Evgeny Styrin, Head, Laboratory for Digital Transformation in Public Administration, NRU HSE

Eran Vygoda-Gadot, Professor of Public Administration & Management, Division of Public Administration & Policy, School of Political Science, University of Haifa, Israel

The preliminary program of the event and information about the speakers can be found at the link.