ECePS - ERA Chair in E-Governance and Digital Public Services

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10062/71906

ECePS kodulehekülg.

ECePS is a 5-year project funded by the EU to raise the research excellence and profile of the University of Tartu in addressing three questions:

• How to harness the benefits of digital transformation of government while minimizing the associated risks and ensuring security, privacy and equal access?

• How can obstacles that prevent governments from implementing e-governance systems be overcome?

• How can researchers and practitioners best utilize the vast amounts of data that is already being generated throughout the world (via existing public e-services)?

ECePS will do so by:

• Applying predictive analytics to existing e-governance systems to suggest improvements to evidence-based policymaking;

• Examining how e-governance data can be utilized to test the effect of specific policies on behavior in real time and not through ex-post impact evaluations;

• Identifying how real-time analysis of in-motion big data can be done while protecting citizens’ privacy and security;

• Examining the impact of e-participation in democratic systems;

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 56

“Citizens’ social media adoption in Paraguay”
(2021) Homburg, Vincent; Moody, Rebecca
This article aims to identify which factors are associated with Paraguayan citizens’ use of social media in citizen-government relations. We gathered data using a vignette-survey with which responses to four public service problems were recorded, apart from scores on perceived effectiveness, capability, social influence, trust in government, trust in social media infrastructure, and social media anxiety. Multivariate analysis was used to test hypotheses. Perceived effectiveness, social influence and trust in social media infrastructures were found to be significantly correlated with citizens’ use of social media to report public service issues. On the other hand, capability, trust in government and social media anxiety were not found to be associated with citizens’ social media use. The results urge us to further theorize and disentangle how perceived effectiveness, social influence and trust in proprietary social media infrastructures affect digital citizen engagement and participation, and under what conditions proprietary social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter contribute to a vibrant democracy.
From the Parliament to a Polling Station: How to Make Electoral Laws More Comprehensible to Election Administrators
(Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 2021) Krivonosova, Iuliia; Serrano-Iova, Radu-Antonio
This article suggests that law modelling (using Business Process Model and Notation, BPMN) could make electoral laws more comprehensible to different stakeholders, and in particular, to election administration, especially in the cases of complex elections with multiple voting channels. This solution helps election administrators to translate the complexity of electoral laws into clear instructions. By this, election administration can adapt to the frequent changes in laws, reach better regulatory compliance, and address the barriers they meet during the delivery of the elections, like overtasking and lack of institutional memory. As a proof of the concept, we demonstrate the applicability of the proposed solution by modelling one voting channel available in the 2019 parliamentary elections in Estonia, advance voting. The article contributes to the theory on election administration, and suggests how this solution could be used in practice: in the field of the electoral law, and outside of it.
Weibo to the Rescue? A study of social media use in citizen–government relations in China
(Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021) Homburg, Vincent; Moody, Rebecca
Purpose In this study, the authors explain citizens’ adoption of social media in citizen–government relations in China, a country that blends an authoritarian governance regime with limited tolerance of and responsiveness to online citizen participation. Design/methodology/approach Original survey data were gathered using a vignette survey among 307 respondents living in the People’s Republic of China. Multivariate analysis of the data was used to test four hypotheses and identify antecedents of Chinese citizens’ social media adoption for “thin” participation purposes. Findings Citizens’ perceived impact of “thin” participation, citizens’ skills and capabilities and citizens’ trust in institutions are significantly associated with citizens’ social media adoption. Social media anxiety was found not to be associated with Chinese citizens’ social media adoption. Research limitations/implications This study demonstrates how vignettes can be used to study adoption of technological and institutional innovations in an authoritarian governance regime and how in this context existing adoption theories can be extended with notions of institutional trust to adequately explain citizens’ adoption of technological and institutional innovations in citizen–government relations. Social implications Although some argue that social media activity could potentially mitigate democratic deficits caused by the state, in the case of China, the intertwinement of state and social media platform renders this argument unsustainable. Originality/value This study is one of the few systematic survey studies focusing on Chinese citizens’ adoption of social media in citizen–government relations.
Digitalisering in de rechtspraak: kan Nederland leren van Estland?
(Rechtstreeks, 2021) Homburg, Vincent; Schmidt, Carsten
Existing comparative studies suggest Estonia is outperforming many Western European countries in terms of electronic service delivery in the judiciary system. This article provides an explanation for this observation. One crucial element in the explanation is the role of the embeddedness of electronic service delivery in the broader national institutions and subsequent organizational ways of working. In addition, for (digital) innovation it is necessary that there is a certain acceptance of failure, with Estonia having a greater tolerance for failure than The Netherlands. The article also notes that there is arguably a strategic component to the use of benchmarks and comparisons, with compelling stories of frontrunners putting developments in other countries in motion. This may lead to the sometimes confusion situation that Estonia is worldwide successtory, whereas in Estonia itself The Netherlands are occasionally portrayed as a benchmark for digitalisation.
“If it makes you happy … it can’t be that bad”: An explanatory study of students’ well-being during international exchange
(International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 2021) Homburg, Timo; Homburg, Vincent
This study reports on adolescents’ experiences as exchange students in an international exchange program. Based on a literature review and multivariate analysis of original on-line survey data collected from 408 students from 40 countries that had spent a year in one out of 37 destinations, it is concluded that the student’s language proficiency and perceived social support during the exchange impacted students’ wellbeing during the exchange, while cultural distance between the student’s home country and destination nor the student’s adventurousness as a personality trait had an impact. It is concluded that the students’ social support and ability to interact during the exchange play an important role in enabling exchange students to reap the benefits of international and intercultural exchange in their formative years.
Exploring Estonian e-government before, during, and beyond COVID-19
(New Zealand Journal for Research on Europe (NZJRE), 2021) Carmichael, Logan
The outbreak of COVID-19 saw lockdowns imposed across the world, and traditionally in-person tasks and services shifted online. While this posed immense challenges in some governmental and institutional settings, in Estonia rigorous digital advancements dating back to the 1990s have made this learning curve markedly less steep, as many digital service provisions were widely available prior to the pandemic. This paper explores Estonia’s e-government solutions pre-dating, during, and beyond the pandemic. It will examine mechanisms – e-ID, X-Road, the information authority, state portal, and e-learning – that existed prior to the pandemic, and others – new e-services, fully online learning, and contact tracing applications – that have emerged in direct response to the pandemic. Finally, this paper will examine how elements of Estonian e-government can, and have been, adopted in international settings, considering how cybersecurity, regulation, and accessibility are closely intertwined with such dialogues surrounding e-government.
Sixth International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting E-Vote-ID 2021. 5-8 October 2021
(University of Tartu Press, 2021) Krimmer, Robert; Volkamer, Melanie; Duenas-Cid, David; Germann, Micha; Glondu, Stéphane; Hofer, Thomas; Krivonosova, Iuliia; Kulyk, Oksana; Martin-Rozumilowicz, Beata; Rønne, Peter; Solvak, Mihkel; Zollinger, Marie-Laure
This volume contains papers presented at E-Vote-ID 2021, the Sixth International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting, held during October 5-8, 2021. Due to the extraordinary situation provoked by Covid-19 Pandemic, the conference is held online for second consecutive edition, instead of in the traditional venue in Bregenz, Austria. E-Vote-ID Conference resulted from the merging of EVOTE and Vote-ID and counting up to 17 years since the _rst E-Vote conference in Austria. Since that conference in 2004, over 1000 experts have attended the venue, including scholars, practitioners, authorities, electoral managers, vendors, and PhD Students. The conference collected the most relevant debates on the development of Electronic Voting, from aspects relating to security and usability through to practical experiences and applications of voting systems, also including legal, social or political aspects, amongst others; turning out to be an important global referent in relation to this issue. Also, this year, the conference consisted of: · Security, Usability and Technical Issues Track · Administrative, Legal, Political and Social Issues Track · Election and Practical Experiences Track · PhD Colloquium, Poster and Demo Session on the day before the conference E-VOTE-ID 2021 received 49 submissions, being, each of them, reviewed by 3 to 5 program committee members, using a double blind review process. As a result, 27 papers were accepted for its presentation in the conference. The selected papers cover a wide range of topics connected with electronic voting, including experiences and revisions of the real uses of E-voting systems and corresponding processes in elections. We would also like to thank the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft für Informatik) with its ECOM working group and KASTEL for their partnership over many years. Further we would like to thank the Swiss Federal Chancellery and the Regional Government of Vorarlberg for their kind support. EVote-ID 2021 conference is kindly supported through European Union's Horizon 2020 projects ECEPS (grant agreement 857622) and mGov4EU (grant agreement 959072). Special thanks go to the members of the international program committee for their hard work in reviewing, discussing, and shepherding papers. They ensured the high quality of these proceedings with their knowledge and experience.
On State-Level Architecture of Digital Government Ecosystems: From ICT-Driven to Data-Centric
(Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2021-05) Draheim, Dirk; Krimmer, Robert; Tammet, Tanel
The \digital transformation" is perceived as the key enabler for increasing wealth and well-being by politics, media and the citizens alike. In the same vein, digital government steadily receives more and more attention. Digital government gives rise to complex, large-scale state-level system landscapes consisting of many players and technological systems { and we call such system landscapes digital government ecosystems. In this paper, we systematically approach the state-level architecture of digital government ecosystems.We will discover the primacy of the state's institutional design in the architecture of digital government ecosystems, where Williamson's institutional analysis framework supports our considerations as theoretical background. Based on that insight, we will establish the notion of data governance architecture, which links data assets with accountable organizations. Our investigation results into a digital government architecture framework that can help in large-scale digital government design e_orts through (i) separation of concerns in terms of appropriate categories, and (ii) a better assessment of the feasibility of envisioned digital transformations. With its focus on data, the proposed framework perfectly _ts the current discussion on moving from ICT-driven to data-centric digital government.
Global Intelligent Governance—A Collaborative Platform
(Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2021-06-09) Ahn, Michael; Chen, Yu-Che; Ganapati, Sukumar; Krimmer, Robert; Viale Pereira, Gabriela; Pliscoff, Cristian; Tseng, Hsien-Lee; Wu, Jiannan
The purpose of this panel on “Global Intelligent Governance—A Collaborative Platform (GIG-CP)” is to discuss the feasibility and need for developing a collaborative platform to facilitate a global network-to-network collaboration of research in intelligent governance (IG). The discussion could provide a guide to establish the platform which will enable collaboration among international research networks. The platform will facilitate establishing common protocols for sharing high quality and high value open data. It would transform data-driven public engagement in collaborative decision making processes. There are three aims of the project: (i) to facilitate the development of research network collaboration; (ii) to enable the design of a global data hub, and (iii) to examine the IG skills required for the future workforce.
Digital Sovereignty and Participation in an Autocratic State: Designing an e-Petition System for Developing Countries
(Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2021-06-09) Lips, Silvia; Ahmed, Rozha K.; Khayyam, Zulfigarzada; Krimmer, Robert; Draheim, Dirk
Establishing a sustainable citizens-government dialogue is a crucial topic on the agenda of many countries. E-petition systems are among the most popular and effective tools for establishing a responsive and effective dialog between governments and citizens. E-petition systems mitigate the gap between citizens and government authorities and contribute to the empowerment of citizens. This study aims to determine how to increase citizens’ participation in decision-making processes through the case of an e-petition system in Azerbaijan. The research employs a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative data collection methods within a case study design. Data were collected from a triangulation of multiple sources, i.e., interviews with state authorities and online survey among the citizens of Azerbaijan. Additionally, we reviewed experiences from other countries that introduced e-petition systems, in order to better understand the success factors of and obstacles to launching e-petition systems, with a particular focus on the needs of developing countries. The outcome of this study is a proposed design of an e-petition system model that can be considered in developing countries.
Data-Driven Personalized E-Government Services: Literature Review and Case Study
(Springer International Publishing, 2021-09-07) Maksimova, Mariia; Solvak, Mihkel; Krimmer, Robert
Better targeted and more personalized service offering to citizens has the potential to make state-citizen interactions more seamless, reduce inefficiencies in service provision, and lower barriers to service access for the less informed and disadvantaged social groups. What constitutes personalization and how the service offering can be customized to meet individual user demand is, however, much less clear and underdeveloped partially due to the technical and legal dependencies involved. The paper gives an overview of how personalization and customization of digital service offering have been discussed in the literature and systematizes the main strand emerging from this. It follows up with a case study of the Estonian X-road log data as one potential way to detect latent user demand emerging from an experienced life-event that could form a basis for letting users define their service needs as holistically as possible. The results show the existence of distinct service usage clusters, with specific user profiles behind them, a clear indication of latent demand that leads to a simultaneous consumption of otherwise independent digital services.
Electronic Voting: 6th International Joint Conference, E-Vote-ID 2021, virtual event, October 5-8, 2021
(Springer Cham, 2021-09-28) Krimmer, Robert; Volkamer, Melanie; Duenas-Cid, David; Kulyk, Oksana; Rønne, Peter; Solvak, Mihkel; Germann, Micha
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Electronic Voting, E-Vote-ID 2021, held online -due to COVID -19- in Bregenz, Austria, in October 2021. The 14 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. The conference collected the most relevant debates on the development of Electronic Voting, from aspects relating to security and usability through to practical experiences and applications of voting systems, as well as legal, social or political aspects.
“@Government There’s a pothole in my street!”: Canadian citizens’ adoption choices of social media use in citizen-government relations
(2021-11) Homburg, Vincent; Moody, Rebecca
Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook offer new opportunities for co-production and interaction between citizens and government agencies. Until now, explanations of why citizens use social media to interact with government have been lacking in the literature. This article concludes on the basis of survey data gathered among Canadian citizens that social media use in citizen-government relations is explained by citizens’ perceived effectiveness and trust in social media organizational infrastructure, with trust in government, social media anxiety and ease of use not having an impact. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Internet Voting is Being Pushed by False Claims and Deceptive Marketing
(2022) Greenhalgh, Susan
While the convenience of voting from a computer or smartphone over the Internet may seem to be desirable, there is overwhelming evidence that ballots cast electronically cannot be adequately secured to protect the legitimacy of the votes and integrity of our elections. Despite these conclusion, online voting has only increased in the U.S. This begs the question, why? From public statements, news reports, press releases and marketing materials it becomes evident that the vendors of these online voting systems have been selling their systems to state and local officials with potentially false, misleading and/or deceptive marketing claims. These spurious claims have served to counter the scientific conclusion that online voting is dangerously insecure and unsuitable for public elections. Moreover, these specious assertions promising security have led state and local government officials to believe, incorrectly, that online voting can be secured, and for these officials to support or press for legislation to adopt and/or expand online voting. This paper examines spurious or false claims made by the two most prominent Internet voting system vendors in the United States, and the impact these false claims have had on laws and policies to adopt online voting.
Is the JCJ voting system really coercion-resistant?
(2022) Cortier, Veronique; Gaudry, Pierrick; Yang, Quentin
Coercion-resistance is a security property of electronic voting, often considered as a must-have for high-stake elections. The JCJ voting scheme, proposed in 2005, is still the reference when designing a coercion-resistant protocol. We highlight a weakness in JCJ that is also present in all the systems following its general structure. It comes from the procedure that precedes the tally, where the trustees remove the ballots that should not be counted. This phase leaks more information than necessary, leading to potential threats for the coerced voters. Fixing this leads to the notion of cleansing-hiding, that we apply to form a variant of JCJ that we call CHide.
Visual Secrets : A recognition-based security primitive and its use for boardroom voting
(2022) Bouchard, Sébastien; Selker, Ted
This paper presents and evaluates a new security primitive in the form of non-transferable “visual secrets”. We show how they can be used in the design of voting systems. More specifically, we introduce a receipt-free low-tech visually verifiable boardroom voting system which is built for simplicity and can serve as a teaching tool to introduce people to verifiable voting.
The Diffusion of Electronic Voting for Participatory Budgeting Projects: Evidence from Ukraine
(2022) Khutkyy, Dmytro
Electronic voting for participatory budgeting projects in Ukraine it is understudied. Therefore, the paper aims to investigate the patterns of diffusion of e-voting for participatory budgeting projects in Ukraine. This quantitative inquiryscrutinized data about 175 Ukrainian communities that have practiced e-participatory budgeting during 2017-2020 utilizing descriptive and inferential statistics,as well as ANOVA analysis of variance, bivariate and partial correlation analysis. It became evident that participatory budgeting e-voting diffusion vary greatly across Ukrainian communities. Overall, there are some indications of an ongoing digitalization of participatory budgeting voting, which cannot be stated with ab-solute certainty. The one definitely confirmed pattern of participatory budgetinge-voting diffusion in Ukrainian communities is that longer duration of participatory budgeting is associated with higher e-voting rates.
Adopting microblogging solutions for interaction with government: survey results from Hunan province, China
(2022) Homburg, V.; Bekkers, V.; Moody, R.; Yang, Q.
Authorities in the People’s Republic of China communicate with citizens using an estimated six hundred thousand Sina Weibo microblogs. This study reports on a study of Chinese citizens’ adoption of microblogs to interact with government. Adoption results from trust and peer pressure in smaller-network ties (densely knit, pervasive social networks surrounding individual citizens). Larger-network ties (trust in institutions-at-large, such as the Chinese Communist Party, executive organizations, the judicial system, media, et cetera) are not associated with adoption of microblogging. Furthermore, higher levels of anxiety are correlated with lower levels of use intentions, and this finding underlines the impact of the Chinese authority’s surveillance and control activities on the lives of individual Chinese citizens. Based in these findings, we outline a theory of why citizens use microblogs to interact with government and suggest avenues for further research into microblogs, state-citizens communication patterns and technology adoption.
Institutional Trust and Social Media Use in Citizen-State Relations: Results from an international cross country vignette study
(Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2022) Homburg, Vincent
The objective of this article is to identify whether trust affects citizens’ use of social media to initiate conversations with government on social media platforms. Using a vignette survey, we gathered data from the Canada, Greece, the Netherlands and Paraguay. Multivariate analysis showed that controlling for demographics and individual-level adoption factors, trust in government does not impact citizens’ use of social media to initiate conversations about public issues, but trust in social media business and organizational infrastructure is (both in democratic countries as well as in flawed democracies). These results highlight how trust in institutions affect citizens’ engagement and digital participation, and identifies conditions under which social media platforms may contribute to a vibrant democracy.
Post-Election Audits in the Philippines
(2022) Schürmann, Carsten
How do you observe the unobservable? The election technology in use in the Philippines are optical ballot scanners called Vote Counting Machines (VCMs) that scan, count, and transmit election results at the close of polls back to the national tallying center. Postelection audits called Random Manual Audits (RMAs) are required by law to take place prior to the result becoming final. In this paper, we explore the idea of replacing RMAs by Risk-Limiting Audits (RLAs) that are effcient, have a high chance of correcting an incorrect election outcome by the means of a recount, and can therefore strengthen public confidence in the election.

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