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Governments worldwide are digitizing their social welfare policies and services despite the persistence of significant levels of digital exclusion. Although digitization may simplify processes and offer better services at lower costs, it may also marginalize citizens with limited digital access and skills, imposing administrative burdens on them and undermining their privacy. This research in progress attempts to make sense of the flourishing literature on the digital transformation of welfare policies and services and its implications for vulnerable citizens. An integrative literature review was conducted, adopting a critical-interpretive perspective. The literature analyzed thus far showcases the multiple ways in which supposedly neutral technology might deepen the exclusion of vulnerable citizens and points to the need for a research agenda focused on developing contexts and on the experience of vulnerable people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This literature review used and expanded Cardullo & Kitchin's (2018) “scaffold of smart citizen participation” to classify the participation level found in the smart governance literature. This review highlights the importance of the use of a common metric for measuring citizens level of participation in smart governance. The departure point of this work is the literature review developed by Tomor et al. (2019). Their review was updated and compared. We confirmed some challenges positioned by the literature on the indiscriminate use of citizen participation as both an intrinsic characteristic of governance and as an outcome of the collaboration (Meijer & Bolívar, 2015; Tomor et al., 2019). This lack of a common understanding of the level of citizen autonomy creates a confusion in the literature regarding the actual level of participation, which highlights a need for further research about citizen participation and collaboration in smart governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores collaborative practices as robust strategies for dealing with the grand challenge of producing ICT statistics in developing countries. We present the case of CETIC.br, responsible for measuring the information society in Brazil, as an instrumental case to illustrate how collaborative practices deal with the complex, uncertain and evaluative process of producing ICT statistics. This process is taken as a grand challenge, since it involves a diversified number of actors, it is in constant evolution and it involves different perceptions of value. We aim to identify how CETIC.br brings heterogeneous actors to interact, produce collaborative advantage and promote evolutionary learning. From a theoretical perspective, we contribute with the literature of grand challenges with theories coming from the field of collaborative practices. To the practie, we intend to contribute to agencies producing statistics in developing economies, that can learn with these collaborative practices for dealing with their grand challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchain is a recent certification technology with high transformative power in many business models, having a social impact by offering solutions that involve governance and sustainability. However, most articles in this area address the use of blockchain in the private trading of cryptocurrencies. This paper is a case study on a pioneer blockchain application in the management of the Green Treasure Program, which operates through an online platform for negotiating Forest Credits, a title issued from environmental services. The context of this analysis is the management of the Green Treasure in the State of Amapá, the Amazon region of Brazil, which has a complex and interesting reality for research: on the one hand, this region faces difficulties in attracting resources due to its socioeconomic isolation; in contrast, more than 90% of its territory is totally preserved. The purpose of this study is to discover the different objectives that can come from the perception of value, among the public and the private sector, during environmental services negotiation on a blockchain based platform. For this, we conduct qualitative research on the case study using the theory of public value and an interpretative perspective, seeking the understanding of the different objectives among the actors involved. The main contribution is to present the use of blockchain in government projects that promote sustainability, the main research gap identified. The results suggest that blockchain can provide security, transparency, and traceability in operations, critical factors for the government, and especially for attracting investors with different profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information technology usage has transformed education systems with significant impacts to academic life and to the reorganization of the educational environment. Therefore, it is essential to understand the benefits arising from the adoption of new effective teaching practices connected to the digital world. In fact, such transformations are increasingly occurring and having impacts beyond institutional barriers. However, it is not completely clear whether information technology has truly transformed teaching practices. The purpose of this research is to investigate the changes in teaching practices motivated by information technology based on scholars' experiences. This study proposes qualitative/interpretive research through a case study with in-depth interviews, document analyses and field observations. The data confirmed that the motivation and transformation of teaching practices using information technology requires more innovative actions to ensure that technology is efficient and intensively used in new teaching methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some new digital infrastructures present disruptive potential, breaking paradigms and changing the way organizations and communities organize themselves and reach their goals. Blockchain, developed to support Bitcoin, is drawing the attention of civil society and researchers when adopted in community currencies, as Digital Social Currency (DSC), or in other processes, such and smart contracts, generating new IT artifacts. The present research investigates the benefits to organizations that manage DSC when adopting this digital infrastructure. Based on multiple case studies, this study uses content analysis to investigate the DSC phenomenon. The empirical study showed that there is a close relationship between currency functions, DSC functionalities and Blockchain functionalities, seeking to generate security, confidence and to enlarge scale of DSC, although there is a tendency to centralize governance of the issuing organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an overview of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research applied in the Management Information Systems field by analyzing the databases of the AIS journal basket list representing the major international journals on MIS. An initial set of 438 published papers was identified based on our search criteria. From those, 74 were selected because of their appropriate fit with the research questions. They were organized into domains, type of research, data collection strategy and AI technique. We found: (1) MIS Quarterly published 42% of the papers; (2) 50% of studies were on Information Systems applications, followed by 15% on Knowledge Management; and (3) 7 AI techniques were presented. This paper provides an overview of applied AI in Management, highlights the most studied related topics and techniques and contributes to a research agenda on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the use of eParticipation platforms influences the drafting of a public policy. We retrospectively investigate the eParticipation process in the drafting of three public mobility policies in major Brazilian cities. Based on studies of comparative and retrospective cases, we design a procedural model that describes eParticipation practices and the influencing mechanisms used over time. We show how the actors involved, the tools chosen, the design of the digital platform, the interaction on the platform, the actions of mediation and the mechanisms used by civil society and government influence the formulation of public policy. We use the perspective of power as a lens for our investigation. Our study contributes to the literature on eParticipation by explaining the practices and changes that have different results on public policy. It also broadens the discussion regarding the complementarity between possession and practice views of power. We highlight that to understand relationships on eParticipation platforms that influence public decisions, it is important to look at aspects of formal authority and critical resources control. However, it is also necessary to recognize the interactions and also the mechanisms that are put into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]