Content

The learning activity for the first part of the course mainly consists of key concepts, practices and exercises related digital public governance – in particular related to policies and associated technologies. This learning activity consists of the following seven modules:

• Module I: Introduction

This module provides an introduction to the course including the rationale behind the importance for the future of the public sector and past developments leading to the current situation. In this module,the public values and principles of digital public governance, as well as the concepts and key practices of public sector innovation are introduced. This module also illustrates the peculiarities of digital public governance and presents the associated governance structures, rules, players and networksand introduces digital transformation in the public sector.

• Module II: Technologies

This module presents relevant and new emerging technologies that are applied in order to manage information in the public sector and to the public sector in a changing society. This module presents relevant elements related to data science aspects of digital public governance (such as data discovery, accessibility, analysis). Additionally, in this module, students become familiar with the concepts of cybersecurity, interoperability and enterprise architecture and its application in the public sector..

Module III: Policies, Challenges & Trends

• This module presents the key policies that are relevant for the current digital public governance at European, federal/national, regional and local administrative levels, and also provides with an overview of the key challenges and trends related to information management. These challenges and trends mainly refer to ethical, legal, financial, governance and technical aspects.

Module IV: Real-world example

• This module sheds light on real world applications of the concepts and technologies presented in the previous modules including the experiences from  Belgium (on federal and regional level), European Union and other countries.

The learning activity for the second part of the course mainly consists of case examples, concrete exercises and an assignment consisting of the following three modules:

• Module V: Strategy Development
  This module presents guidelines and tools as ways of support for developing an organizational strategy for digital public governance (incl. eGovernance and Public Sector Innovation).

• Module VI: Roadmaps
  This module focuses on the development of a roadmap leading to a successful implementation of the organizational strategy. Reference is made to existing successful roadmaps.  
• Module VIII: Final Assignment
  This module deals with the development of a strategy for better managing information resources for a specific public organization. Students have to write a strategy report in group. 

Course material

The following course material is used during this course:

• Class slides, made available via Toledo
• Additional literature, made available via Toledo
• Online exercises on a relevant case study, made available via Toledo
• Online assignments, made available via Toledo

Format: more information

Practical lecture

During the on campus lectures, the key principles, concepts, values, technologies, policies are introduced, explained and discussed. In addition, key elements related to data science aspects as well as institutionalization related to the digital transformation in the public sector are presented and discussed.  Moreover, key challenges and trends are presented and explained as well.  References are made to (inter)national practices. In addition, guest speakers from different administrative levels are invited to explain the ‘real’ implementations with the associated implications. 

In modules V-VII, students learn (mainly online) how to develop their own organizational strategy for digital governance with a focus on digital transformation (eGovernance) and Public Sector Innovation through exercises, assignments, feedback and discussions. This online part of the course aims to stimulate the debate on the future of digital public governance. In this part of the course, digital public governance can help students to learn about the relevant methods, tools, data and applications by using a more hands-on approach. It allows the students to immediately apply and discover what they have learned. The classes are used for theoretical introductions as well as more interactive discussions.

The modules are set up according to the learning cycle of Kolb^[1] consisting of four building blocks: a theoretical introduction, case examples, concrete exercises and an assignment. The students can go through these different building blocks according to their own learning style. Each building block aligns with a different step in the learning cycle of Kolb.

• Theoretical introduction: This block focuses on the knowledge transfer related to key principles and relevant trends, policies and practices relating to digital public governance.
• Case examples: During this block the students are given the opportunity to reflect on a set of case examples as well as the state-of-the-art applications.
• Concrete exercises: This block consists of a set of exercises illustrating concrete cases.
• Assignment: In this block, the students are given an assignment to enable them to reflect and report on the current situation of a specific organization in the context of digital public governance.