[ecrea] CfP "Policy lessons from a decade of eGovernment, eHealth & eInclusion" - European Journal of ePractice

Call for papers

*European Journal of ePractice
Policy lessons from a decade of eGovernment, eHealth & eInclusion*
http://www.epractice.eu/en/node/5284341

Deadline: 25 August 2011

Policy lessons from a decade of eGovernment, eHealth, and eInclusion 
Europe has had many information society strategies, eEurope (1999), 
i2010 (2005) and Digital Agenda for Europe (2010). eGovernment, eHealth, 
and eInclusion are the three policy sub-domains comprising the societal 
public services pillar which is the backbone of all of these strategic 
frameworks.

Given the emphasis that the new overarching EU2020 Strategy places on 
tackling grand societal challenges and turning them into economic 
opportunities, the relevance of these three domains is today even higher 
than in the past. Inclusive Innovation is often called the I2 paradigm. 
It is, thus, of the uttermost importance today to take stock of what has 
been achieved, not simply for reasons of accountability of public 
spending, but also in order to derive lessons and insights that can 
improve the efforts towards 2020.

A large body of secondary and primary data exists on outcomes of such 
policies for the users and the administrations and on the drivers and 
barriers for this kind of ICT enabled administrative and social 
innovation. Yet, we still do not have conclusive evidence and 
interpretative frameworks to guide the design of future policies and 
investments.

Alongside cases of success, we can find several instances of 
counter-intuitive results and of intentional or unintentional policy 
resistance. For instance, why the phenomenal growth in the supply of 
eGovernment services has not been followed by a comparable growth in 
usage of such services it is still to be explained. Increasing numbers 
of user oriented functionalities for mobile health services are offered 
by technology but little take up is documented within the institutional 
practice of healthcare. Noteworthy legislative measures and investments 
for eAccessibility and digital literacy do not yet bring Europe close to 
meet the Riga Ministerial targets from 2006.

While empirical evidence should continue to be gathered, it is clear 
that a paradigm shift is needed in the interpretative knowledge engines 
supporting policy making. In other words, we need to apply a different 
perspective on the evidence available and on what we make of it for 
policy design. In particular, insights from behavioural studies and 
social network analysis are needed to: a) understand why certain policy 
measures are supported and other resisted by the target (policy 
takers);b) study how social networks structure and flows can lead to 
positive cascade effects for adoption of policy measures; c) extract 
insights for new policies that focus on choices architecture to nudge 
users into desired direction without infringing on individual free choice.

So, the key question in this issue is: what are the theoretical and 
interpretative frameworks that can help us make better sense of the 
evidence already collected and support new and innovative policy 
approaches? The answer may be approaches that so far never or very 
seldom have been applied to eGovernment, eHealth, and eInclusion. 
Behavioural and social network studies have been mentioned only as an 
example. Other alternative approaches can include System Dynamics and 
other tools using empirical data to elaborate modelling simulation under 
counter-factual assumptions ("what if?"). Papers can also propose yet 
other alternative approaches. The thread is, however, to discuss 
frameworks resting on two basic assumptions: a) policy resistance and 
failure springs from the fact that ecosystem are way more complex than 
the linear and reductionist assumptions upon which policy design tend to 
rest; b) agents act using socially embedded and bounded rationality.

Regardless of the chosen approach, papers should not be merely 
descriptive of data (in whatever form, statistics, survey results, in 
depth case studies) but ideally would propose a new interpretative and 
theoretical framework supported by illustrative and explanatory 
empirical evidence. There is no need to test a hypothesis. Purely 
theoretical or methodological papers are also welcome but they should 
include a sustained analysis and argue for the validity of the proposed 
framework through a systematic review of the relevant literature.

Additionally, we also welcome papers illustrating how new paradigms have 
been successfully applied in other policy domain and showing how they 
could be applied in eGovernment, eHealth, and eInclusion.

The issue editor is: Cristiano Codagnone

The deadline for article submission is: August 25, 2011. Please, send 
your papers to (vassilia.orfanou /at/ eurodyn.com) with a copy to 
(epractice /at/ eurodyn.com)