From: David Alcaud [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 09 November 2007 14:34
Subject: Call for paper- E-Government and Social Inclusion: Barriers,
Opportunities and Future Direction


Dear partners,
Please find below a call for paper which might interest you or some of
your colleagues.
Sincerely yours,
David Alcaud

E-Government and Social Inclusion: Barriers, Opportunities and Future
Direction March 11, 2008, Brussels, Belgium

Call for Papers
E-inclusion has attracted wide attention from governments and
intermediate civil society organizations over the last years. Improving
access to and use of the internet has grown into an important goal of
social and educational policy given the prospects opened by the internet
for communication, learning and democracy. Internet access is thus
slowly growing into one of those components of relevance for tapping on
social integration.
Reluctantly at first, but then quite rapidly governments have also been
realizing that preaching the use of modern forms of communication also
implies their dissemination within and application to government
services. E-government delineates the use of the internet and Web
services by public authorities and for their interaction with citizens.
In the ELOST project supported by the ICT programme of the Sixth RTD
Framework of the European Communities, a consortium of six research
institutions across Europe and beyond has looked into the development of
e-government policy and the its success with regard to reaching out to
lower socio-economic strata. This has involved the running of a survey
among citizens of low socio-economic background, the organization of
focus groups, expert interviews with policy-makers, the desk-review and
comparison of policy documents, as well as the organization of a
small-scale foresight exercise among technology and e-government
experts.
In the present workshop, the ELOST research experiences and findings
will be juxtaposed to those of other projects working on related themes
at European or national level. Next to overview papers about
e-government policies and their impact, contributions are invited on
pilot projects in the field, as well as on evaluation studies.
The workshop will take place in Brussels on March 11, 2008 (exact
location to be announced shortly). Financial assistance (towards the
covering of accommodation and/or travel expenses) will be provided in
select cases.
Paper proposals should be sent to [log in to unmask] by
Monday, 26th November 2007. Selected paper presenters will be informed
by the middle of December, and their final papers and slides for the
presentation should become available by the 5th February 2008.
Paper proposals should indicate

    * the title of the paper,
    * the session(s) to which it thematically relates to (see below),
    * the author(s), their coordinates and their institutional
affiliation.

The abstracts should be no longer than 750 words.

Session I: E-inclusion policies and e-government programmes

    * E-government policies / programmes in comparison (over time or
across countries); most welcome are European comparisons and global
comparisons.
    * E-government policies in the context of e-inclusion policies - one
and the same or two different approaches?
    * What can be learned for e-government from studies on traditional
means of interaction with public authorities.
    * E-government policies as programmes of government efficiency and
cost-cutting or as programmes of greater openness and responsiveness to
the citizen? Complementary or contradictory objectives?
    * Different lessons from different policy sectors and public
authorities (for instance comparing e-government in labour offices
across countries; or comparison e-health with e-job, e-democracy etc.)

Session II: Patterns of use of the internet and e-government among
different groups

    * Quantitative vs. qualitative studies
    * Surveys, focus groups, citizen dialogues and foresight studies
    * Risk groups and their specific problems
    * Problems faced by the older generation, younger unemployed, women,
migrants, disabled persons etc.

Session III: Best practice in e-inclusion and e-government

    * Pilot programmes in comparison (target groups, set up,
organization, impact).
    * What role / impact for training and life-long learning programmes
    * Organizational / institutional set up for social integration and
training programmes
    * What role for civil society organizations?
    * Use of multi-lingual and multi-media learning methods.

Session IV: Future solutions and policies to improve e-government

    * Dimensions of user-friendliness (navigation, language,
presentation, interfaces etc.) and demonstration of how to improve them.
    * Learning from the commercial internet sector about how to improve
user-friendliness
    * The important of human / online support with demonstration
examples.

For more information on the ELOST project, please visit www.elost.org.  

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