Keynote speakers

David Avison

Short Bio: David Avison is Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at ESSEC Business School, near Paris, France. He was Professor at the School of Management at Southampton University and  has also held posts at Brunel and Aston Universities in England, and the University of Technology Sydney and University of New South Wales in Australia. He is President of the Association of Information Systems (AIS). He is joint editor of Blackwell Science's Information Systems Journal now in its eighteenth volume, and rated in the AIS basket of six research journals. So far, twenty-five books
are to his credit including the fourth edition of the well-used text Information Systems Development: Methodologies, Techniques and Tools (jointly authored with Guy Fitzgerald).  He has published a large number of research papers in learned journals, edited texts and conference papers.

Reflections on a Personal Journey into the Practice, Teaching and Research in Information Systems: An Egocentric Story
In this presentation I reflect on my research related to information systems development, in particular that which converges with practice. It emphasizes qualitative research, especially action research, and discusses its potential impact on the discipline of information systems.
In so doing, it discusses the role of stakeholders (academic colleagues and practitioners) in furthering the research and potentially the discipline as a whole.

Antonio Cordella

Short Bio: Dr Antonio Cordella is Lecturer in Information Systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests and publications cover the areas of E-government, Economic Theories of Information Systems, and the Social Studies of Information Systems. His most recent publications are: Cordella, Antonio. 'E-government: towards the e-bureaucratic form?' Journal of Information Technology(2007) 22, 265­274;
Contini, F; Cordella, A. ŒItalian Justice System and ICT: Matches and Mismatches between Technology and Organisation¹ in Cerillo A. (ed.) ŒE-Justice: Using Information Communication Technologies in the Court System¹  (2008), IGI Publisher; Cordella Antonio, Willcoks, L. ŒE-Bureaucracy and the New Service Delivery State: Balancing Outsourcing and In-House Operations¹ in Contini, F., Lanzara G.,  (ed) ŒICT and Innovation in the Public Sector: European Perspectives in the Making of E-Government¹ (2008) Palgrave Macmillan.

A new approach to e-Government
Abstract: Bureaucratic institutions not only provide mechanisms to coordinate work activities in the public sector, but also serve to enforce the democratic values of equality and impartiality. This talk explores how recent approaches to e-government neglect these important dimensions of bureaucracy and proposes an alternative approach to e-government. The e-bureaucratic form is proposed as an e-government solution, which, while taking advantages of the information and communication technology as means of coordination, also help to enforce the values of equality and impartiality underpinned through the actions emanating from bureaucratic structures.

Claudia Loebbecke

Short Bio: Claudia Loebbecke holds the Chair of Business Administration, Media and Technology Management and is Director of the Department of Media and
Technology Management at the University  of Cologne.  She served  the Association for Information Systems (AIS) as president (2005-2006) and as council member (2001 - 2007). Previously, Claudia Loebbecke visited or worked at the London School of Economics (UK), Bentley College (US), CISR/Sloan School/MIT (US), INSEAD (France), Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), Erasmus University (The Netherlands), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Hong Kong), the University of New South Wales (Australia), and McKinsey & Co and the BIFOA (both Germany). She is Senior Editor of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS), Associate Editor of The Information Society (TIS) and on the editorial board of the Information Systems Journal (ISJ), the Journal of Information Technology (JIT), the Journal of Media Management (JMM) and Communications of the AIS (CAIS). Claudia Loebbecke received a Masters (1990) and a Ph.D. (1995) in Business Administration, both from the University of Cologne, Germany, and an M.B.A. from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA (1991). She was granted a Fulbright Scholarship (1986/87) and a DAAD Scholarship (1990/91).
She is member of Beta Gamma Sigma and the European Academy of Sciences.

Action Research, Design Science, and Participatory Design:
Three Approaches in Collaborative IS Projects and IS Publications

Traditionally stressing the argument of relevance in the 'rigor versus relevance' debate, Action Research (AR), Design Science (DS), and Participatory Design (PD) have been applied successfully in collaborative Information Systems (IS) projects. The presentation outlines the characteristics of the three methods along their research contribution, roots, and methodological guidelines and - based on text analysis - explores similarities and differences of selected IS projects, each prominently published under one of those methods, often in method-specific publication outlets. The presentation postulates that many collaborative IS research projects, seemingly based on different methods, demonstrate remarkable similarities concerning research contribution, roots, and methodological guidelines. Thereupon, the presentation discusses implications for IS research communities. It points to opportunities when aiming at academic publications while facing the challenge of doing research 'relevant' to practice. Finally, the presentation purposefully stimulates an open discussion and looks forward to provocative counter-arguments from the audience.

Mike Martin

Short bio: Mike Martin joined International Computers Limited in 1969 and has remained in Research and Development in the IT and Telecommunications sectors
throughout his career. For the last ten years he has been undertaking research and consultancy in the public sector particularly in the area of multi-agency working in health, social care and education. He is Visiting Professor at the Centre for Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Enterprise at the Newcastle Business School and was previously Visiting Professor at the Centre for Software Reliability in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University.

Coproduction and transformation processes and how they can be nurtured.
In this keynote speech I will examine some of the experience we have had,and the lessons we have learned, while facilitating the development of multi-agency working in social care and health and in the design of the organisational, governance and information systems that support partnership working. I will discuss  the processes that move from the initial sharing and exploration of the multiple perspectives of different practitioners, managers and clients in the caring and developmental sectors, to the multiple projections of the socio-technical systems they must co-construct and shape. These processes will be set in a theoretical framework which brings together concepts from Gregory Bateson, Pierre Bourdieu and Alan Badiou to classify and to interrelate orders and processes of change, development and learning.

Jeremy Rose

Short bio: Jeremy Rose is Associate Professor at the Department of Computing Science, Aalborg University, Denmark.  He has worked with the PITNIT and SPV research projects in Denmark, in a variety of action research and consulting roles, and is active as a member of the IFIP WG8.2 community.  His research
interests are principally concerned with IT and organizational change, IT and societal change the management of IT, and systems development.  He has published in management, systems, eGovernment and information systems journals and conferences.  He has been involved with research in computing in the public sector both in England and Denmark, and is active in managing the Demo-Net European network of excellence.  He was the founding director
of the Centre for eGovernance at Aalborg University.  Further details and some publications are available at www.cs.auc.dk/~jeremy/.

Technology and Government: Crossing the Divide
Central to the eGovernment field, but rather little debated in its literature, is the relationship between information technology and government. How does information technology affect government; how does government affect information technology?  How can we theorise and describe this two-way relationship?  How can we understand it and exploit it to improve the quality of citizens¹ lives, and the effectiveness and responsiveness of government.  The problem is not new in the information systems field, where the relationship between technology and organisations has long been discussed.  Attention is often focused on finding a middle way between the extremes of technological and social determinism ­ models where technology and organisation develop hand in hand, in response to each other.
The talk investigates the implications of this way of thinking in respect to:

1. two divides: technology/organisation, and the digital divide
2. three major components of modern government: eAdministration, eService and eParticipation.