Emerging Technologies for E-participation and Smart Governance Models

Dear Colleagues,

Smart cities have placed an emphasis on the need to implement more open and collaborative governance models for city management with the aim of both assisting societies toward better democratic systems and implementing sustainable development principles through global partnership. In this context, emerging technologies (such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, chatbots or blockchain) are opening new ways for citizens to become more directly involved in public governance, offering new possibilities to improve government transparency, citizen collaboration, and citizen participation. These technologies are not only implemented as isolated islands or projects but also included as necessary technological tools into wider smart initiatives, making them more effective and efficient. This way, while blockchain has been applied in eDemocracy platforms as a new pattern of management among the agents that participate in the public sphere, chatbots have been proposed in Open Data projects to provide support and better access of citizens to data collections.

The current rapid development and adaption of these emerging technologies to existing practices makes this topic interesting, as does the lack of empirical evidence on the novel implementation of these emerging technologies and its impact on improving smart governance models in smart cities, communities, rural areas, and regions, both of which motivated us to launch this Special Issue.

Topics of interest in this Special Issue include but are not limited to the following:

• Use of blockchain, IoT, Big data or chatbots to improve government transparency;
• Integration of emerging technologies for more collaborative and participative governments;
• Open Government projects based on the use of emerging technologies;
• Comparative studies in using emerging technologies for improving smart governance in city management;
• Case studies of emerging technologies integration in smart initiatives;
• Determinants in the use and implementation of emerging technologies in smart urban areas.

In brief, we invite papers that analyze the link between emerging technologies and improvement of new smart governance models implemented in cities, communities, rural areas, or regions. These papers can be focused on the impact of different emerging technologies in the achievement of more open, accountable, and collaborative governments. Additionally, scholars are invited to submit papers analyzing the institutional and/or contextual conditions of the implementation of these emerging technologies to improve government transparency, citizen collaboration, and citizen participation. In any case, this Special Issue will mainly focus on empirical papers, including case studies, comparative case studies (that involve different countries or disciplines), and surveys. Finally, empirical studies about emerging technologies and their impact on citizens’ quality of life will be welcome.

Prof. Dr. Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sci is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Emerging technologies
• Blockchain
• IoT
• Chatbots
• Smart governance
• Smart city
• Sustainable cities.