2014•12•03     Hong Kong

Tomasz Janowski, Head of UNU-EGOV, delivered a keynote lecture on the first day of the International Conference for e-Democracy and Open Government (CeDem Asia 2014), which was held in Hong Kong SAR from 3 to 4 December 2014. With more than 80 participants attending from 19 countries, the conference aimed to bring together researchers, policy-makers, industry professionals, and civil society activists to discuss the role of social and mobile media in the future of citizenship and governance, and to showcase and analyse existing research, best practices, and emerging topics that are shaping the future of e-Government, e-Democracy and Open Government in Asia and around the world.

The lecture delivered by Tomasz Janowski, entitled “From Electronic Governance to Policy-Driven Electronic Governance: Evolution of Technology Use in Government”, explained the evolution of technology use by governments, presented an innovation system theory to explain this evolution, postulated the next step in the evolution – Policy-Driven EGOV, presented some evidence in support of this postulate, explained what a transition from EGOV to Policy-Driven EGOV entails, and put this transition in the context of the post-2015 United Nations development agenda. Towards the end of the lecture, several questions were raised, for instance concerning the use of e-Government in non-democratic settings, whether the model captures the “what” or the “how” of the evolution, and the extent to which the evolution happens spontaneously or by design.

Tomasz Janowski delivers a keynote lecture at the International Conference for e-Democracy and Open Government in Hong Kong on 3 December 2014.