Big Data, Public Management and Governance

Call for Papers

June 1^st -2^nd, 2019

Shanghai, China

With the growing use of social media, mobile phone apps, other types of connected devices, and big data analytics, public agencies all over the world are facing growing challenges and opportunities in the new era of e-government, digital governance, and the ‘Internet of Anything’ environment. For example, different types of connected devices, such as sensors, smart phones, fleet management sensors, and emergency response devices, can now generate a vast amount of data that could be processed in real-time to provide valuable insights and actionable intelligence. Also, storage and access of those data can provide historical insights and enable predictive analytics. At the same time, public organizations that are launching big data initiatives often face significant challenges in managing their data effectively, ethically, and securely. Also, they face new questions about the appropriate organizational design and ethical policies that have to keep up with this changing technological environment. Public agencies must also find ways to modernize their existing IT infrastructures to take advantage of emerging technologies. Finally, public agencies must find novel mechanism to structure public-private partnerships in order to secure technical capabilities and at the same time invest in internal IT capability development. These open up new opportunities for public administration scholars to revisit some of the managerial, organizational, ethical, and governance questions and explore new methodological frontier that are unique in the Big Data environment. These challenges and opportunities are important to both practitioners and academia in the 21^st century.

The aim of this conference is to curate leading research on how public management and governance are being transformed and will be impacted by developments in big data and artificial (machine) intelligence systems. We are specifically interested in papers that advance our knowledge about how big data technologies are being designed, deployed, implemented, and evaluated to transform urban planning, public policy processes, organizational and program management, citizen engagement, governance mechanisms, and public institutions in cities.

The China Institute for Urban Governance and the School of International and Public Affairs of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in collaboration with Bocconi University, and Queensland University of Technology, will co-host this Big Data, Public Management and Governance Conference on June 1st-2nd, 2019 in Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

l  The application of Big Data tools (e.g. data mining techniques; machine-learning algorithms; the Internet of Things) in public management and policy analysis, their benefits and challenges, and the implications for future management and policy research, both in China and globally;

l  The promises and challenges of Big Data tools in addressing the core questions of public management and governance locally and globally;

l  The foreseeable challenges of data governance issues related to the use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, such as concerns of data privacy and sharing, algorithmic transparency and validation, and machine-to-machine (system-of-systems) networks issues (e.g. risk and dependency );

l  IT modernization and adoption of emerging technology innovations in the era of big data and artificial intelligence systems;

l  Efforts to secure technical and data systems and data governance standardization approaches in the public sector.

Paper proposals shall have a length of approximately 1,000 words. We are open to papers that take any methodological approach, are especially interested in papers that take a multidisciplinary approach. All papers should strive to make a contribution to both theoretical development and practice.

Proposals should be submitted via the mailbox: bigdatapm2019@163.com . Accepted papers in this conference will be organized into symposia in cooperating academic journals after going through the peer review process. There is no registration fee.

Important Dates:

Proposal submission: February 15^th, 2019

Notification for abstract acceptance: March 1^st, 2019

Full paper submission and registration: May 7^th, 2019

Registration: June 1^st, 2019

Conference: June 2^nd, 2019

Contacts:

Professor Jiannan Wu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Professor Greta Nasi, Bocconi University

Professor Alfred Ho, University of Kansas

Professor Kevin Desouza, Queensland University of Technology

Professor J. Ignacio Criado, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid