Thursday, 9/28/2017
Delfina Sá Soares, Assistant Professor from the
Department of Information Systems (DSI) of the School of Engineering of the
University of Minho (EEUM), was appointed as Head of the Operating Unit on
Policy-Driven Electronic Governance of the United Nations University (UNU-EGOV)
by the Rector of UNU, also Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, David
Malone. The researcher took office on the 1st September.
Delfina Sá
Soares, Assistant Professor from the Department of Information Systems (DSI) of
the School of Engineering of the University of Minho (EEUM) and researcher at
the ALGORITMI Research Centre (ALGORITMI), also from the EEUM, was appointed,
in September 2017, Head of UNU-EGOV, an Operating Unit on Policy-Driven
Electronic Governance, based in Guimarães.
The electronic
governance aims to put information technology at the service of governance and other
multiple functions related to state governance duties. Therefore, this concept
of electronic governance includes the provision of public services to citizens,
which is frequently associated to e-government term. It also involves aspects
intrinsic to other spheres – society, public administration and politics.
Moreover, issues such as electronic participation, electronic voting and the
technologies used by the executive and the political parties themselves – at
decision-making and policy making levels – are also included in electronic
governance.
The
installation of the United Nation’s Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic
Governance in Guimarães has had a very positive impact on the city. The
researcher highlights that the process of electronic governance’s installation of
an institution is always one of the most difficult periods, but reinforces that
the Unit has had invaluable collaboration from the whole municipal authority:
“Any country should be proud to welcome United Nations’ institutions. In
Portugal, apart from ours, there are three more UNUs’ institutions in Lisbon,
and this whole project was very well received by the successive governments
with whom we have already interacted”.
This Unit
develops several projects that focus, for example, on the smart cities’ area; evaluation
of the social and economic impacts of electronic governance; electronic
participation of digital democracy; definition of strategies and policies for
e-governance, and measurement, evaluation and monitoring of the development of
electronic governance in countries. In addition to these scientific areas, the
Operating Unit is working on another important component related to the participation
in projects for less developed countries, in order to take knowledge – through
training – and experiences to these countries on issues of electronic
governance. Therefore, it has been possible to strengthen the interaction with
UMinho researchers, particularly from the EEUM. It has been possible to create synergies
between the two institutions, taking – where possible – such help and expertise
to the less developed countries.
As Head of the
Unit, Delfina Sá Soares has many diverse functions which go from institutional
and administration management, human resources management, scientific
coordination of the unit’s research program, to establishment and management of
network relationships. The researcher highlights that “this type of institution
does not survive or succeed if there are no networks of relations between
universities, national and international research centres operating in this
area, institutions operating within the United Nations system, and the countries,
that are the target as far as the implementation of our work is concerned”.
Delfina Sá
Soares completed her 1st cycle degree in Systems and Informatics
Engineering in 1994 and her PhD in Technologies and Information Systems in
2010, both at the University of Minho. She develops her activity in the DSI of
the EEUM since 2001 and she is a researcher at the ALGORITMI Research Centre,
also of the EEUM. She is member of the Executive Committee of the Observatory
for the Study and Development of the Information Society (GÁVEA) and board
member of the Portuguese Chapter of the Association for Information Systems
(PTAIS). Delfina Sá Soares participates and supervises research projects and national
and international organisational intervention projects in the area of electronic
and digital transformation, having participated in seminars and given
presentations under the e-Governance domain.
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info: http://www.dsi.uminho.pt; http://algoritmi.uminho.pt; https://egov.unu.edu/
