Digital Government

Since its inception, the Digital Government Track at HICSS has presented innovative research at the vanguard of digital government research and practice. The HICSS 58 Digital Government Track received 81 completed research submissions across ten mini tracks, including a pre-conference doctoral consortium.

Over the years, the Track has sought to balance providing a venue for new and emerging topics and mature ones with well-defined parameters. Typically, the acceptance rate for more mature topical mini tracks is lower (~30 %), while the acceptance rate for emerging topics is higher (~50%) to promote the growth of scholarship in new areas. Overall, the Digital Government Track seeks an acceptance rate of below 50%, which was also the case this year.

The high number of submissions and the overall acceptance rate reaffirm the interest in Digital Government, which was brought to the forefront during the global COVID-19 pandemic and has continued postpandemic, with many physical government services having moved online. In addition, the ranking of the HICSS Digital Government Track has shown to be a prominent conference outlet in the field offering the opportunity to explore cutting-edge research through its minitracks:

• AI in Government
• Cybersecurity and Privacy in Government
• Design, Implementation, and Management of Digital Government Policies and Strategies
• Disaster Information, Resilience, for Emergency and Crisis Technologies
• Emerging Topics in Digital Government
• Narrowing the Digital Divide: Digital Equity, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Digital Government
• Open Government: Policies, Practices, Challenges, and Impacts
• Smart and Connected Cities and Communities
• Theory and Methods in Digital Government
• e-Democracy, e-Participation and e-Voting

The breadth and scope of the topics explored through the minitracks is a reflection of the continued growth of Digital Government as a field of study as well as the evolution of global government engagement with digital technologies as maintained through the Digital Government Reference Library Version 20.0 https://faculty.washington.edu/jscholl/dgrl/. As of June 13, 2024, the library contains 19,932 references of predominantly English-language, peer-reviewed work in the study domains of digital government, digital governance, and digital democracy. This marks a 2.8% increase in references from version 19.5 (December 2023) and a 6.8% increase from version 19.0 (June 2023). This past publication period has continued to be another good one for Digital Government-related publishing, adding 1,264 new peer-reviewed academic references within the past 12 months. Digital Government research continues to thrive in numbers and quality, and the HICSS conference reflects that trajectory.

Mila Gasco Hernandez
University at Albany, SUNY
mgasco@albany.edu

Ludwig Christian Schaupp
West Virginia University
Christian.Schaupp@mail.wvu.edu