Electronic Government in an Aging Society - Policies, Projects, Potentials (AGeGov)

Basic data for this project

Description

Bjoern Niehaves, head of public sector research at the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS), receives a Schumpeter Fellowship granted by the Volkswagen Foundation. From 2009 to 2014, the fellowship-based project will address questions of ICT & Aging. Specifically, it seeks to investigate into how governmental institutions might be able to contribute to addressing aging-related societal challenges. The project builds upon an inter-disciplinary research approach and embraces economical, technological, and political science perspectives. Initial ideas for the project were crafted particularly during research visits in Japan, the world’s ‘oldest’ country when it comes to the population share of age of 65 yrs and older. Here, joint comparative research was carried out involving ERCIS, the Department of Political Science (University of Muenster), and the Okuma School of Public Management (Waseda University, Tokyo). After the completion his PhD studies in Information Systems (2006) and in Political Science (2008), Bjoern is now a CES-visiting scholar at Harvard University, Cambridge/MA. The Schumpeter Fellowships of the VolkswagenFoundation – named after Joseph Alois Schumpeter, one of the most successful economists and social scientists of the 20th century – aim at supporting young scholars in economics, social science, and law who wish to open up new areas of research in interdisciplinary projects. Having a size of up to 600,000 Euros, the projects should fathom and transcend the boundaries of disciplines regarding subjects and methods or contribute to academic reorientation by cooperating beyond the common combination of disciplines. The project has three stages. First, we seek to identify worldwide the best practices on Age-Aware eGovernment. This means that we seek to collect and describe projects that contain three ingredients: 1) Involvement of local government/s, 2) Use of IT, 3) Relating to elderly citizens. The collection of best practices focusses on Europe, but spans America, Asia and Australia as well. Second, we seek to analyse some projects in greater detail and will develop a theory in this area (for instance, on factors that trigger or hinder the emergence or success of Age-Aware eGovernment projects). This will be more research oriented. Third, we will consult some selected local administrations in their IT strategy with regard to societal aging (action research).