Smart cities and e-government

New developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have enabled public organizations to innovate in their internal processes and in the services they offer. In that context, these developments have led to the emergence of the e-government and smart city concepts that will alter, and ultimately improve, the functioning of public organizations.

 

Description

In the recent years, new developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have enabled numerous organisations to deliver their information and services in new and innovative ways. Regarding governments, these new developments have led to the emergence of the “e-government” concept, referring to the use of ICT by governmental entities, in order to deliver their information and services more optimally to their users (citizens, businesses and other governmental organisations).

In this context, the “Smart Cities” and “Smart Territories” emerge as a broader paradigm that refers to the design of innovative solutions to tackle issues of public interest by including all major stakeholders of the city and territory (government, private sector, NGOs, citizens). These innovative solutions are often gathered into several fields focusing on a specific issue: smart mobility, smart governance, smart living, smart people, smart economy and smart environment. In the situations, the use of AI by public services raises new research areas like B2G data sharing, public procurement, liability questions. Recently, a research contract has been signed between NADI and AdN (Agence du Numérique, Walloon Region) to analyse the ethical and regulatory framework of the AI development within the Waloon administrations.

NADI promotes scientific research in these fields from different perspectives: administrative simplification, security requirements, open data, e-service development, citizen participation, stakeholder ecosystem, human-computer interaction, etc. More than 30 internationally recognised experts from several research centres of NADI are currently joining forces and conducting transversal research involving these disciplines. Current research projects include Wal e-Cities, DIGI4FED,Citizen Participation through Open Data, AI and Public services and TRAKK Capacity Building.

Open data guide

As part of its role as Smart Region academic referent in collaboration with the SPW and the Agence du Numérique, funded by the Walloon Recovery Plan, the Namur Digital Institute is carrying out a number of initiatives aimed at helping public bodies to publish and exploit open data. These involve providing support on legal issues, organising the annual Vivre la Ville conference, supervising projects using open data in the Data Analytics course, and finally drafting a guide proposing a roadmap for the publication and use of open data for public bodies.

This guide details the open data publication process in all its stages and explains how open data can be reused to develop innovative services or set up citizen participation projects. The guide is illustrated by examples and recommendations based on scientific literature.  Download the guide (PDF).


 

Key publications

  • A. Clarinval, B. Dumas and B. Duhoux (2019). Supporting citizen participation with adaptive public displays: a process model proposal. In Proceedings of the 31st Conference on l'Interaction Homme-Machine: Adjunct (pp. 1-11)
  • E. Degrave and C. De Terwangne (2016). Règlement e-IDAS et secteur public: La carte d'identité électronique belge, instrument d'une identité numérique européene?. In L'identification électronique et les services de confiance depuis le règlement eIDAS (pp. 361-380). Larcier.
  • E. Gebka and A. Castiaux (2019). Data-driven initiatives in Smart cities: citizen participation and value creation. In ISPIM Conference Proceedings (pp. 1-9). The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM).
  • L. Gérard (2017). Réutilisation des données du secteur public: la transposition de la directive 2013/37/UE par la loi du 4 mai 2016, Auteurs et Media, 2017, n°4, pp. 322-333.
  • L. Gérard (2017). Robotisation des services publics: l'intelligence artificielle peut-elle s'immiscer sans heurt dans nos administrations. In Intelligence artificielle et le droit (dir. A. De Streel et H. Jacquemin), Bruxelles, Larcier, 2017, pp. 413-436.
  • M. Knockaert (2018). La réutilisation des informations du secteur public: l'open data et les organismes publics, J.T., 2018, n°6739, pp. 613-621.
  • A. Lachapelle (2020). La dénonciation fiscale à l'ère des lanceurs d'alerte: de la complaisance à la vigilance.
  • A. Simonofski, E.S. Asensio, J. De Smedt, and M. Snoeck (2018). Hearing the Voice of Citizens in Smart City Design: The CitiVoice Framework. Business \& Information Systems Engineering, 1-14
  • A. Simonofski, H. Ayed, B. Vanderose, and M. Snoeck (2018). From Traditional to Agile E-Government Service Development: Starting from Practitioners' Challenges. In Americas Conference on Information Systems, Boston. Association for Information Systems (AIS).

 

Projects

  • AI and Public services - Towards an adequate legal framework: Study sponsored by AdN (2020 - 2021)
  • DIGI4FED: Use of AI and Big Data by Governments to fight tax and social fraud (2020-2022)
  • FLEXPUB: Une génération nouvelle de services publics flexibles -- le cas des informations géographique (2016-2020)
  • Towards an effective citizen participation through open data (UNamur CERUNA PhD Grant) (2019-...)
  • TRAKK : Capacity Building des acteurs en matière de créativité et d'innovation (2014-...)
  • Wal-e-cities: LIV, MOB and GOV projects (2016-2020)

 

Contact: Anthony Simonofski