Dear InfoVis community, as we are particularly interested in contributions about the visualization of urban sensing, smart city, or e-government data, I would like to share the CfP for our upcoming special issue below. Best regards Christian Jetter ----------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS ----------------------------------------------------------------- Special Issue on E-Government and Smart Cities i-com - Journal of Interactive Media https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/icom/icom-overview.xml?language=en http://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/105?locale-attribute=en ** Submission Deadline: Mar 31, 2021 ** ----------------------------------------------------------------- MOTIVATION AND SCOPE ----------------------------------------------------------------- The widespread adoption of online services, mobile and pervasive computing, and social media has changed citizens' attitudes and expectations towards government, citizen participation, and the efficiency of public administration. In light of new technological opportunities and challenges, public administrations are expanding their digital services in all fields of action. This includes classic e-government offers, such as applications for social benefits or building permits, but also solutions in the context of smart cities, urban sensing, and connected rural communities that rely on active participation, communication, and cooperation among citizens. Ideally, such new technologies will help citizens and civil servants to become efficient users of government services, consentful providers and informed users of government or city data, participants of constructive discourse, and informed decision makers. However, in practice, these goals are difficult to meet due to problems with the acceptance, availability, usability, and practical usefulness of new digital technologies and their application. ----------------------------------------------------------------- TOPICS ----------------------------------------------------------------- The relationship between citizens and public administrations has specific characteristics. Public services have a profound impact on the life of individuals and society. While the requirements for usability and user experience are not fundamentally different in the public sector compared to other areas, there are existential dependencies, for example against the background of security and order, protection, and welfare. On the other hand, public administrations are also accountable to citizens. Therefore, a key challenge is the human-centred design of new e-government and smart city services and answering key questions such as: - How can e-government or smart city services be designed to achieve sufficient usability and a positive user experience (especially with regard to trust, transparency, reliability) for all conceivable user groups? How can designers avoid that no one is excluded from government services and participatory platforms? - How can technologies such as information visualization, virtual reality, augmented reality, or conversational user interfaces contribute to human-centred e-government or smart cities? - How can e-government and smart city solutions be evaluated concerning usability and user experience? - How can services provide usable and human-centered applications while, at the same time, the regulatory framework needs to be correctly represented? - How can we harness the "bottom-up" creativity and innovative forces of civic hackers, citzen-led projects, and DIY initiatives, while also achieving the reliability and accountability of traditional "top-down" frameworks such as large IT or telecommunication cooperations? - How can we make citizens, public administration employees and other users curious about (or challenge them with) new civic technologies? - How can we educate citizens and public administration employees about e-government and smart city technologies and let them become active users or even active developers? - How can we enable citizens to actively control their level of participation, e.g., by enabling them to opt-in and opt-out of data collection and by letting them control their desired degree of privacy and anonymity? We welcome contributions that address these challenges and related interdisciplinary submissions. Accepted articles will be published in the Journal of Interactive Media (i-com). The journal is indexed by Scopus, among others. -------------------------------------------------------------- GUEST EDITORS -------------------------------------------------------------- Moreen Heine, University of Luebeck, Professor of eGovernment and Open Data Ecosystems, Institute for Multimedia and Interactive Systems (IMIS) Hans-Christian Jetter, University of Luebeck, Professor of Interaction Design and User Experience, Institute for Multimedia and Interactive Systems (IMIS) ---------------------------------------------------------------- TIMELINE ---------------------------------------------------------------- 28.02.2021 Submission Deadline Abstracts 31.03.2021 Submission Deadline 31.04.2021 Review results 21.05.2021 Revisions due 31.05.2021 Final Decision ----------------------------------------------------------------- SUBMISSION AND REVIEW PROCESS ----------------------------------------------------------------- All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process. Hereby, each manuscript will be reviewed by three independent expert reviewers. Possible outcomes of the first round of reviews are: accept, revision, or reject. Authors of submissions that require revision will have one month to implement the required changes. Anonymized manuscripts need to be submitted via ScholarOne. The anticipated length of papers for this special issue is about 7.000 - 10.000 words. The length of the manuscript should be proportional to its contribution. Templates for preparing submissions can be accessed below. Link to Submission System: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/icom Templates for preparing manuscripts are available at: https://www.degruyter.com/view/journals/icom/icom-overview.xml?tab_body=over... , but free-format submissions are also acceptable.