ECePS ERA Chair in e-governance and digital public services
ECePS is a 5-year project, funded by the European Union ERA Chairs programme. The purpose of the project is to raise the research excellence and profile of the University of Tartu by recruiting a senior research scientist who in turn will build up and lead a team to carry out high level research in the area of e-governance within the Center for IT Impact Studies (CITIS).
Lead researcher: Prof Vincent Homburg
Project manager: Hector C Pagan
Project Coordinator: Dr Mihkel Solvak
Project period: September 2019 - February 2025
The goal of the project is to build up a high-level research team in e-governance and digital public services, including ensuring the research sustainability in University of Tartu. The team will seek to address three questions in particular:
The ECePS team will do so by:
Applying predictive analytics to existing e-governance systems to suggest improvements to evidence-based policy-making;
Examining how e-governance data can be utilized to test the effect of specific policies on behaviour 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;
The ERA Chair will seek to trigger structural changes within University of Tartu to support this by:
Initiating changes to CITIS research unit, including creation of a CITIS Supervisory Board, formation of advisory groups with members from industry, government and scientific community, and a Professorship position for the ERA Chair.
Integrating researchers from other departments relevant for e-governance research into the CITIS structure, including the SoBigData Research Infrastructure, the Institute of Social Studies, the School of Economics and the Faculty of Law as well as University of Tartu's High Performance Computing Center.
Building partnerships with governments and leading technology companies to create new models for attracting public and private research funding. The ERA Chair will also act as a role model to produce spill-over benefits for University of Tartu to modernize rules and practices regarding the recruitment and performance measurement of researchers, systematically implement processes to address RRI priorities and improve University of Tartu’s gender policies.
ECePS ERA Chair has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 857622
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