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 deadline for article submission is: April 25, 2010. Please, send your papers to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Article guidelines:
- Language: English
- Length: Full texts of 2 000 - 6 000 words (the word limit may be extended in exceptional cases)
- Executive summary of 200-300 words
- Keywords & key sentence which stand out
- Tables, pictures and figures sent as attachments
- References according to the guidelines
- Author must have a public profile on ePractice.eu/people
See the full guidelines at http://www.epracticejournal.eu/guidelines