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Forschungspraktikum SocialGov

In the winter term 2014/2015, the research group E-Government offers a research internship for master students on conceptualising a "Social Government Platform".

Kick-off meeting:

will take place in the second week of december. The date will be coordinated via a doodle.

Venue:

All meetings take place in room A 131 (eGov Living Lab).

Target groups:

  • Master Information Management
  • Master E-Government
  • Master Information Systems
  • Master Computer Science
  • Master Computational Visualistics
  • Master Web Science

Module description (in German):

See Module number 04FB2003

Registration to the research internship:

  • Registration via Klips is open and will be closed as soon as 12 students have registered or by 30th November 2014 (whichever event occurs first)
  • A minimum of 6 students is required to hold the internship. If less students are registered by 30th November, the research internship offer will be withdrawn.
  • Registration in Klips is not binding. The final enrollment to the research internship will be confirmed along the kick-off meeting.

Subject of internship: Conceptualising a Social Government (SocialGov) platform

The SocialGov platform should provide a personalised social space for public service provision to enable open government and co-creation of citizens and businesses with public administrations in the design and provision of e-government and local community services. The solution should facilitate a stronger collaboration of citizens and businesses with governments in public service provisioning. By public service we refer to services offered by

  • governments themselves or
  • governments in co-operation with
    • individual citizens or civil society organisations,
    • companies and/or
    • non-government organisations

in order to perform activities (that can refer to both, duties and proactive offerings for above mentioned actors, which are of public interest) for governing a State.

The SocialGov platform should unite methods, concepts and tools of social media and social networks (such as user-created content and social communities) with those of open government (transparency, open data, open services, open processes) and of personalisation in order to bring forward an innovative form of personalised open government and public service provision therewith enabling the different actors to engage together. We call this concept Social Government. In this internship, the SocialGov platform thus should materialise into a concept and testbed for testing this idea.

Objectives and tasks of the research internship

The objective of the research internship is to conceptualise, design and prototypically implement a SocialGov platform going beyond state-of-the-art web platforms, social media and mobile applications by integrating these individual solutions into a personalised social government space for local communities.

The research internship demands for the application of system analysis, requirements analysis and conceptual modelling methods before prototypically implementing a social government community platform.

Based on these objectives, the following tasks are to be performed:

  1. Analysing the current offers and identifying weaknesses of these solutions towards the ideas of Social Government
  2. Specifying use cases and requirements for the SocialGov platform
  3. Developing conceptual models and an architecture for the design of the SocialGov platform
  4. Evaluating existing tools and innovative technologies supporting the SocialGov idea (e.g. mobile solutions, open data technologies, interfaces to social networks)
  5. Prototypical implementation of the SocialGov platform by selecting tools and technologies prioritised in the previous step
  6. Project documentation
  7. Project management

Requirements for participation in the research internship

  • Knowledge and skills of system analysis, software engineering and web engineering methods, therewith also mastering appropriate analysis and modelling tools
  • Familiar with application development - both for the Internet and for mobile apps
  • Interest in innovating public services domains and in engaging local communities in public sector responsibilities

Your benefit

  • Insights into conceptualising and prototypically implementing a Social Government platform
  • Experiences in methods and technologies of analysis, requirements specification and conceptual modelling of web-based solutions
  • Experiences in prototypical implementation of a personalised community space that goes way beyond social media offers and integrates existing online services
  • Experiences in project management and participation in a project team
  • Experiences in project documentation
  • Insights and experiences in communication and presentation of project results

Organisational issues

Project meetings will take place approx. every second week.

The research internship will be held in English. Accordingly, all documentation is to be developed in English, too.

Recommended readings

Bennet, R. J. (1993). European Local Government Systems. In R. J. Bennett (Ed.), Local Government in the New Europe. London and New York: Bellhaven Press.

Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., & Hanse, D. (2012). The impact of polices on government social media usage: Issues, challenges, and recommendations. Government Information Quarterly, 29(1), 30–40. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2011.04.004

Bonsóna, E., Torresb, L., Royob, S., & Flores, F. (2012). Local e-government 2.0: Social media and corporate transparency in municipalities. Government Information Quarterly, 29(2), 123–132. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2011.10.001

DGCONNECT. (2013). A vision for public services. European Commission. Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. Retrieved from http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=3179

European Commission. (2011). A Quality Framework for Services of General Interest in Europe (No. 900).

Goldsmith, M. (1992). Loval Government. Urban Studies, 29(3/4), 393–410.

Huber, E., & Stephens, J. (2001). Development and Crisis of the Welfare State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lidström, A. (2003). Kommunsystem i Europa [Local government systems in Europe]. Malmö: Liber.

Linders, D. (2012). From e-government to we-government: Defining a typology for citizen coproduction in the age of social media. Government Information Quarterly, 29(4), 446–454. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.003

Löffler, E., & Timm-Arnold, P. (2013). BürgerInnen in der Mitgestaltungs-Kommune: Aktuelle Tendenzen, Ansätze und Perspektiven von Koproduktion in deutschen Kommunen. Bertelsmann Stiftung. Retrieved from http://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/cps/rde/xbcr/SID-59E05223-94FD4327/bst/xcms_bst_dms_37556_37557_2.pdf

Nambisan, S., & Nambisan, P. (2013). Engaging Citizens in Co-Creation in Public Services: Lessons Learned and Best Practices. IBM Center for The Business of Government.

Scherer, S., Holzner, M., Karamagioli, E., Lorenz, M., Schepers, J., Wimmer, M. A. (2009): Integrating Semantics, Social Software and Serious Games into eParticipation: The VoiceS Project. In: Electronic Participation: Proceedings of Ongoing Research, General Development Issues and Projects of ePart 2009, Austria: Trauner. p. 151-158.

Scherer, S., Karamagioli, E.,Titorencu, M., Schepers, J., Wimmer, M. A.; Koulolias, V. (2009): Usability Engineering in eParticipation. In: European Journal of ePractice. Nr. 7. S. 78-91.

Scherer, S., Ventzke, S., & Wimmer, M. (2011). Evaluation of Open Source Content Management Systems for E-Participation. In Y. H. Marijn; Macintosh Ann; Scholl Hans Jochen; Tambouris Efthimios; Wimmer Maria A.; de Bruijn Hans; Tan Janssen (Ed.), Electronic Government and Electronic Participation. Joint Proceedings of Ongoing Research and Projects of IFIP EGOV and ePart 2011 (Vol. 37, pp. 413–421). Linz: Universitätsverlag Rudolf Trauner.

Scherer, S., Wimmer, M. A.; & Ventzke, S. (2010): Hands-on guideline for e-participation initiatives. In: Janssen, Marijn; Lamersdorf, Winfried; Pries-Heje, Jan; Rosemann, Michael: E-Government, E-Services and Global Processes, Joint IFIP TC 8 and TC 6 International Conferences EGES 2010 and GISP 2010. Springer Verlag, Berlin. Nr. 334. p. 49-61.

Scherer, S., Wimmer, M. A.; & Ventzke, S. (2009): Requirements and recommendations for eParticipation applications. In: Proceedings of the Electronic Democracy (EDEM) conference 2009, 7.-8.9.2009 University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna. S. 187-197.

Scherer, S., Wimmer, M. A., & Schepers, J. (2012): Regional Participation Model to Engage Citizens in Distant Decision Making. In: Charalabidis, Yannis; Koussouris, Sotiris: Empowering Open and Collaborative Governance. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg. p. 139-155.

Welch, E. W., Hinnant, C. C., & Moon, M. J. (2005). Linking Citizen Satisfaction with E-Government and Trust in Government. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 15(3), 371–391. doi:10.1093/jopart/mui021

Wimmer, M. A. (2002): Integrated service modeling for online one-stop Government. In: EM Electronic Markets, special issue on e-Government. Vol. 12. Nr. 3. p. 1-8.

Wimmer, M. A., Scherer, S.; Moss, S.; Bicking, M. (2012): Method and Tools to Support Stakeholder Engagement in Policy Development: The OCOPOMO Project. In: International Journal of Electronic Government Research. Vol. 8. Nr. 3. p. 98-119.