Digital Government Theory: Development, Integration, and Application
Half-Day Symposium

Digital government, a multi-disciplinary domain, benefits from researchers and practitioners from diverse fields, including but not limited to public administration, information systems, information science, and political science. As the domain matures, it is useful for scholars and other stakeholders to examine the state of the body of knowledge. This half-day symposium will include presenters and panelists with diverse views on the role of theory development in digital government to promote critical discussion of the current status and future trajectory of the discipline. The symposium will explore e-government theory development and its relationship to applied research in the field, by addressing several key questions:

The symposium will explores several key questions:

• Given the applied nature of digital government, what is the role of theory?
• What are the fundamental theoretical contributions to or from the digital government discipline, if any?
• Does the field have any foundational theoretic frameworks? Given its interdisciplinary nature, does the field need to develop its own set of theories?
• What is the appropriate balance of theory and practice in this domain of study? What are the reference disciplines for digital government, if any?
• Does digital government have, or shall digital government have, a "home" (anchor) discipline?
• Is digital government (can, or shall, it evolve into) its own discipline?
• What relevance does the digital government body of knowledge have to practice?

More information on the symposium leaders:

Lemuria Carter is the Department Chair and an Associate Professor in the Information Systems Department in the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests include technology adoption, e-government and cyber security. Her research has been published in several top-tier journals including the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information Systems Journal and Decision Support Systems. She has served as the e-government track and mini-track chair for the Americas Conference on Information Systems and the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Her research has been funded by the Institute for Homeland Security Solutions and the Southeastern Transportation Institute.

John Bertot is an Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs and also Professor and co-director of the Information Policy & Access Center (iPAC). John is serving as associate editor of Government Information Quarterly. He has previously served as Chair of the American Library Association's (ALA) Library Research Round Table, and currently serves on the ALA Committee on Research and Statistics and E-government Services Subcommittee.

Hans Jochen Scholl, PhD, serves as a Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. He earned a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Albany, NY/SUNY and also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from the GSBA Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests focus on understanding human-originated complex systems, in particular, by means of system dynamics. Besides quantitative approaches, he also embarks on qualitative research using Action Research and Situational Action Analysis among other methods. Areas of study include information artifact evaluation, electronic and smart government, disaster studies (disaster information management), technology evolution, and pro sports information management. Jochen is a past president of the Digital Government Society and serves as Chair of the IFIP WG 8.5 (IS and Public Administration). Further, he chairs the globally top-rated Electronic Government Track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). He also supervises the maintenance and publication of the E-Government Reference Library (EGRL).