An increasingly digital government (e-Government) that harnesses interactive technology, engages its citizens, works through public-private partnerships, leverages open data, and promotes the use of “smart” technologies is turning our information policies and the notion of the information life-cycle on their heads. We have entered a new era of preservation, one that redefines the notion of a record – and the public record – from a linear model based on finite points from creation to disposition to one that is continuous and ongoing. Moving forward, we will have difficulty in identifying a discrete beginning and end point to our policies, our records, our documents, our materials. The steady march towards e-Government means that we need to rethink what it is to preserve our record and ensure an open, transparent, and accountable government that increasingly relies on ongoing conversations with its citizens and information and data that are diffused across a range of technologies and partners.
John Bertot is Professor and Co-Director of the Information Policy & Access Center (iPAC) in the University of Maryland College Park iSchool. He also serves as director of the MLS program, a position he began in July 2011. John joined the iSchool faculty in August 2008. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. His research spans information and telecommunications policy, e-government, government agency technology planning and evaluation, and library planning and evaluation. He is President of the Digital Government Society of North America (DGSNA), serves as chair of the International Standards Organization’s (ISO) Library Performance Indicator (ISO 11620) working group, and serves as a member ISO Library Statistics (ISO 2789) working group. John has previously served as Chair of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Library Research Round Table, and currently serves on the ALA Committee on Research and Statistics and E-government Services Subcommittee. In addition, John is Editor of Government Information Quarterly and co-Editor of The Library Quarterly. Over the years, John has received funding for his research from the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government Accountability Office, the American Library Association, and the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Fraterna Auditorium, Travessa de Vila Verde – S. Sebastião
4800-430 Guimarães
GPS coordinates: 41.439399, -8.293594
Email: egov@unu.edu
Telephone: +351 253 510 858