CTG UAlbany was well represented at the EGOV-CeDEM-ePart 2018 International Conference at Danube University in Krems, Austria from Sept. 3-5.

Beyond attending the conference and serving in leadership positions, the research institute at the University at Albany also had a pair of papers published in the conference proceedings. 

Director Theresa Pardo chaired the Policy Modeling and Policy Informatics track for the conference, while Research Director J. Ramon Gil-Garcia was the chair of the Open Data, Linked Data & Semantic Web track and the PhD Colloquium.

Faculty Fellow Luis Luna-Reyes and Program Director Meghan Cook were both on the Program Committee.

The first CTG UAlbany paper published was, “Understanding the Potential of Blockchain for IoT Data in the Public Sector: Challenges and Benefits in a Simulated Environment,” by Visiting Scholar Lingjun Fan, Graduate Assistant Sora Park, and Gil-Garcia.

“The benefits of blockchain technology are only conceptual and it lacks empirical evidence as to what kinds of benefits and challenges blockchain technology would bring to data management,” researchers said in the paper. “We simulated a sensors’ network and analyzed how blockchain can be used for Internet of Things data management in the public sector.”

The second CTG UAlbany paper in the proceedings was by Public Administration and Policy graduate student Crystal Charles and Gil-Garcia titled, “Government Engagement with the Civic Tech Community on Twitter: The Case of the New York City School of Data.”

“Social media have become spaces for engagement and interactions between government agencies, citizens, businesses, and civic organizations,” Charles and Gil-Garcia said in the abstract of the paper. “However, there is little empirical evidence on the role of local governments in social media networks not initiated by them. Based on social network analysis and content analysis about the New York City School of Data, this study characterizes how governments engage with the civic tech community using Twitter.”

“Preliminary results indicate that the local government plays a relatively prominent role in the network, interacting with actors from multiple sectors,” they said.