Special issue on evidence-based government: secure, transparent and responsible digital governance

Abstract

This special issue is a collection of papers from the 18th International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2017) that address security, privacy, transparency as well as responsible governance and policy making in open government and open society. The abundance of available data, including open government data, social data, and sensor data, facilitates evidence-based government. This offers the possibility of making information dissemination and government services more accountable and also more innovative and transformative to fit to the needs of citizens and cities, and transitions policy making to potentially become more participatory and collaborative. In this open-data-driven society, where the data is disseminated, re-used and re-purposed, as well as connected and fused, researchers need to investigate the impact of open data and the risks of the “open data society.” What are suitable policies to govern the data dissemination, distribution, reuse and repurposing? What are different types of data governance models, and what are their relative advantages and disadvantages? What new risks and opportunities does an open data society face? What are the enabling factors and risks of the data-driven policy making paradigm? Can citizens be made more aware of and accountable for their own privacy by developing technology-driven detection mechanisms of privacy risks? For this special issue, we feature articles that cover theoretical, practical, and technical approaches to solving issues arising when disseminating, reusing, repurposing and hyper-connecting different sources of big data (including open government data, social data, sensor data, and ubiquitous data) for the purposes of innovation and transformation of government and society.