Background

Today, eGovernment has become a recognised research domain, as well as an established public policy area at both EU and Member States levels. A modernised ICT-enabled government is acknowledged as a key precondition in promoting the growth and competitiveness of the European knowledge society. When considered as a single entity, government is by far Europe?s biggest economic sector: overall government spending across EU-15 amounted to about 49% of GDP in 2003 and affects all other sectors of the economy. Given this sheer size, it is increasingly evident that governmental efficiency results in important performance improvements and cost savings. Similarly, an increase in the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector management of the economy and society substantially reduces the administrative burden government imposes on businesses and citizens, which in European countries is particularly high.

There is an increasingly urgent need to facilitate open discussion about the future strategic development of eGovernment and the public sector among experts worldwide. The goal of such a discussion must be to transform the Government landscape into coherent networked communities, capable of anticipating customer needs and of making use of the available potentials of innovative ICT. Current deficiencies and challenges of eGovernment research in respect to potential futures of Governments, Society and ICT in 10 years and beyond must be identified and carefully investigated.

In order to address these questions, the European Commission has funded a number of studies to investigate eGovernment research; among them a study conducted by the Danish Technological Institute (DTI) and the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), a study on ICT-driven models of eGovernment by TNO and DTI , a study by the ICEG in Hungary , a Coordination Action called eGovernet. Gartner, a large ICT consulting firm, also performed a similar exercise of scenario-developments for eGovernment 2020. Last but not least, these questions have been the focus of eGovRTD2020, a specific support action under the sixth framework programme of IST, whose key results are now available online in format of a book.

The eGovRTD2020 project's key results are:

• A comprehensive methodology: a structured approach for strategic planning based on a holistic view of the field under consideration, including a scenario-building technique for the development of visionary scenarios reaching beyond traditional forecasting and trend analyses, a method for gap analysis of strategic aspects in research, and a technique and roadmap schema to define a range of specific thematic actions and actors to reach a target.
• A number of visionary scenarios: In the scenario-building phase, intense interaction with key stakeholders of eGovernment was carried out to develop visionary scenarios of how governments might look in 2020. In six regional workshops in Europe and one in the US, 29 scenarios were developed by 141 participants to describe images of how the public sector might use advanced ICT to interact with its constituency about 15 years from now. These were synthesised and reduced to a set of eight scenarios to communicate the main features of these future visions to expert stakeholders and policy level decision-makers.
• A gap analysis methodology: The methodology can be considered an innovative new concept for analysing deficiencies in current aspects which are assessed in respect to future needs. The expertise and knowledge gathered in this activity is very important in research and in policy development in terms of understanding what the problems and challenges are. The methodology can be applied in different contexts.
• The results of gap analysis: Likewise, the results of gap analysis provide important traces from the current state and future visions towards the roadmap. The gaps are the connecting tie among now and what is required in terms of challenges, barriers, and needs. Gaps and gap storylines set the scope for roadmaps. Since such activities are still very vague in literature, the project partners have gathered significant expertise in regards to analysing and synthesising such strategy challenges.
• A policy-oriented science and technology roadmap with thirteen research themes, associated actions for target stakeholders, which are phased in a timescale from now till 2020: The roadmapping results represent exploitable knowledge in two dimensions:
  
  • the research themes formulated provide a path to the future, thereby addressing the EC strategic policy goals related to eGovernment (reaching even beyond the five policy objectives of the EC), and based on a holistic view, which is obligatory in the field of eGovernment;
  • the innovative methodology developed and applied extends and enriches currently available roadmapping approaches with a more comprehensive, holistic perspective, and a stronger, scientifically examined methodology, which becomes now available to the research community, but can as well be applied in other domains of strategic policy planning reaching beyond short- to mid-term trend and prognosis exercises.

Workshop objective

At the workshop, key results from the eGOVRTD2020 project and other similar projects will be presented. Further on, discussion will be instigated on how to efficiently address identified future research themes to shape them into the eGovernment research framework, and to convince key strategic funding policy advisors to bring back eGovernment as a key research theme in basic research funding intruments.

The discussion will be organized in four groups of discussion with the following topics:

• Living labs as a means to bring together multidisciplinary research and application in experimental environments.
• Technology platforms as means to integrate research and practical implementation in order to strengthen the dialogue among research and practice (Governments, politics and ICT industry and consulting) and to increase the effectiveness of knowledge transfer of e-Government research findings into innovative practical implementations.
• International EGOV research excellence communities as instruments to foster closer collaboration and joint research activities among academic institutions internationally and across disciplines.
• Research instruments to investigate specific research themes such as thematic aspects of studying or designing eGovernment (in the very broad understanding, i.e. ICT in any area of the public sector), theoretical research and multidisciplinary methods for studying or designing eGovernment

The groups shall investigate the instruments along the following lines of discussion:

• Specific form of the instrument: in what way will the instrument support eGovernment research and implementation, and what will be the specific objectives, outcomes and benefits, and for whom?
• Under what conditions will the instruments help to advance the field, and what barriers do exist?
• What role does international collaboration in eGovernment research play in this instrument to foster advanced contributions by the instrument?
• What impact and potential side effects will the instrument generate, how can it contribute to streamline certain scenarios and to avoid specific unwanted future directions?

Handouts of the 13 research themes and of the eGovRTD2020 roadmap will be provided at the workshop to support discussion.

Each group will have half to three quarters of an hour for developing the instrument along the specific questions. To prepare for the group discussion, we recommend the participants to read through the eGovRTD2020 book and to browse through a set of slides of the project. Also, participants are invited to register for a specific group and participate in the online discussion on the topics beforehand. The online discussion shall help to facilitate a focused discussion at the conference workshop. It will be continued after the workshop to wrap up the results.

It is the aim of the eGovRTD2020 project partners to come up with a 1-2 pages report towards the EC to stress the need for focused eGovernment research in the future research programmes of IST and other thematic priorities and to propose specific themes and instruments as an outcome of the project and the workshop in Regensburg.