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Call For Papers Using information in local governance: learning from the past, facing up to current challenges and shaping future opportunities Guest editors: Rob Wilson (Newcastle University), Susan Baines (Manchester Metropolitan University), Irene Hardill (Northumbria University) and Martin Ferguson (Socitm: the Society of Information Technology Management) This themed issue of Public Money & Management will explore the key challenges posed by the uses of information in policy-making and delivering public services. Public services are being affected worldwide by two new challenges: austerity measures and information overload. There is a need to critically examine how these changes effect individuals, families, communities and organizations, and the relationships between them. Once, achieving the vision of responsive and agile local services was hampered by a shortage of information. Today, the problem is the opposite-information overload (see Wilson et al., 2011, Information for localism? Policy sensemaking for local governance. Public Money & Management, 31, 4, pp. 295-300). Traditionally, information systems have been largely in the hands of the state. Typically, these systems have been shaped through a range of responses to legislative programmes and approaches to performance management and delivered using long established institutional systems supplied by major IT providers-or, in some contexts, dominant niche suppliers. We are now seeing the growing phenomenon of open data and an emergent activist community using a variety of social networking tools. Such activity is raising the 'governance stakes', with new approaches and experiments being conducted in a variety of domains across the globe. The scale and scope of data and information potentially available for local service governance is likely to begin to shape an 'information economy' of personal information; performance information; service management/commissioning information; transaction data; and other sources of organizational and community-generated data. Some of the challenges include tensions between individual privacy and community safety; activity around environmental sustainability and financial economy; balancing the state and individual contributions to health and social care; and approaches to accounting for the governance of services and of information, not to mention the mechanisms by and values on which decisions were taken. We invite contributions from any disciplinary perspective that will advance understanding of these challenges for researchers, policy makers, citizens, philanthropists and public institutions in the 21st century. Themes that articles could address include (but are not limited to): * The role of information in fostering developments in innovation and improvements in service delivery. * The deployment of information to support or refute value claims by and on behalf of service providers from the public, private and third sectors. * The application of information to enable choice and control under the rubrics of personalized and open public services. * The governance of personal information when services involve several providers from the statutory, voluntary and private sectors. * Theoretical framings, methodological challenges and community values in the use of information. * Aspects of open data approaches such as political and policy drivers and/or methods, practices and tools. Final articles must be no more than 5250 words. Full articles will be double-blind refereed by an academic and a practitioner reviewer. Given the emergent nature of these debates, we particularly welcome 'new development' articles (up to 2750 words) that focus on the potential or impact of change; and debate articles (about 1000 words) expressing personal viewpoints supported by evidence. These are not blind reviewed but subject to editorial scrutiny by the guest editorial team. See http://www.cipfa.org.uk/pt/pmm/submissions.cfm for PMM's requirements. Initial ideas for articles, new developments or debate pieces should be sent as long abstracts (between 500 and 1500 words) to [log in to unmask] by 31 January 2011 for consideration by the editorial team. Invitations to submit full versions of articles will issued by the end of February 2012, with final versions anticipated by the end of August 2012 for review with publication timetabled for 2013. ************************************************************************************ Distributed through Cyber-Society-Live [CSL]: CSL is a moderated discussion list made up of people who are interested in the interdisciplinary academic study of Cyber Society in all its manifestations.To join the list please visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cyber-society-live.html *************************************************************************************