Anthony Simonofski

University of Namur | FUNDP · Faculty of Economics, Social Sciences and Business Administration

Generative AI is paving its way into the research process. Among the plethora of available generative AI solutions, the generation of synthetic data is one of the most controversial. The current division of opinion and the lack of formal approach to AI use in research create a situation of conflicting bad practices and under-used potential. This wo...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) within digital government has witnessed growing interest as it can improve governance processes and stimulate citizen engagement. Despite the rise of Generative AI, discussions on AI fusion with Open Government Data (OGD) remain limited to specific implementations and scattered across disciplines. Drawing from the synth...

Improvements in citizen participation are among the core benefits often attributed to the publication of Open Government Data (OGD). However, our specific understanding of the range of added value that OGD can bring to citizen participation projects remains limited. In this paper, we employed the Repertory Grid Technique with eight practitioners to...

Digital Participation Platforms (DPP) can enable a massive online participation of citizens in policy-making. However, this digital channel brings new challenges for citizens in the form of information overload and asynchronous dialogues. Various disciplines of online ideation provide different AI-based approaches to tackle these challenges, but th...

Digital Participation Platforms (DPP) can enable a massive online participation of citizens in policy-making. However, this digital channel brings new challenges for citizens in the form of information overload and asynchronous dialogues. Various disciplines of online ideation provide different AI-based approaches to tackle these challenges, but th...

Agile practices and methodologies have been steadily gaining in popularity within the software development landscape. This has been mainly happening due to their focus on value-maximizing features satisfying the users of software solutions, and their capacity to cope with change within all the development life-cycle phases. Despite the successful p...

E-participation consists of several phases such as planning, implementation and evaluation. However, when representing this process, the implementation phase tends to be considered as a single block (the so-called "black-box"). This becomes a problem when the implementation combines offline and online methods, as it requires a detailed characteriza...

Governments have been publishing Open Government Data (OGD) on online portals to encourage the development of value-added services. The success of these services depends heavily on the quality of OGD and its metadata. Several methods have been proposed to evaluate this quality, but some rely on manual assessments, which can be time-consuming and ex...

The use of artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making in public policy processes is influenced by a range of diverse drivers. This article provides a comprehensive view of 13 drivers and their interrelationships, identified through empirical findings from the taxation and social security domains in Belgium. These drivers are organized...

Smart mobility, one of the key smart city application areas, has been increasingly important in the daily management of cities. Smart mobility can improve citizens’ well-being and reach sustainability objectives by establishing an appropriate mobility system. However, despite the availability of research about practical smart mobility cases, the re...

Smart cities are receiving a lot of attention from researchers and practitioners as they are considered potential solutions to challenges (e.g., traffic congestion and waste management) faced by cities. As a result, the term “smart city” is recurring in political discourses and the news. Moreover, smart cities are transitioning from strong and tech...

Open Government Data (OGD) consists of data released by publishers to drive the creation of innovative services by developers, and ultimately deliver value to citizens. However, the lack of communication between the different OGD stakeholders impedes the realization of this objective. The goal of this paper is to fill the technical aspects of this...

Purpose Over the past decade, governments around the world have implemented open government data (OGD) policies to make their data publicly available, with collaboration and citizen engagement being one of the main goals. However, even though a lot of data is published, only a few citizens are aware of its existence and usefulness. The purpose of t...

Government policies focused on Open Government Data (OGD) often aim to stimulate the provision of public, interoperable data towards any user, including lay citizens, through online portals. However, these OGD portals are mostly developed for expert users. This hinders the realization of critical values such as transparency, empowerment, and equali...

The use of individual visualizations for Open Government Data (OGD) has been shown not to be entirely efficient in engaging citizens. Dashboards constitute a promising solution but how they should be designed and applied in an OGD context remains under-investigated. This paper examines whether the use of well-designed dashboards can increase citize...

Government policies focused on Open Government Data (OGD) often aim to stimulate the provision of public, interoperable data towards any user, including lay citizens, through online portals. However, these OGD portals are primarily developed for expert users. This hinders the realization of transparency, empowerment, and equality of access. This sy...

Open Government Data (OGD) consists of data released by publishers to drive the creation of innovative services by developers, and ultimately deliver value to citizens. However, the lack of communication between the different OGD stakeholders impedes the realization of this objective. The goal of this paper is to fill the technical aspects of this...

Fraud analytics refers to the use of advanced analytics (data mining, big data analysis, or artificial intelligence) to detect fraud. While fraud analytics offers the promise of more efficiency in fighting fraud, it also raises legal challenges related to data protection and administrative law. These legal requirements are well documented but the c...

Over the past decade, governments around the world have implemented Open Government Data (OGD) policies to make their data publicly available, with collaboration and citizen engagement being one of the main goals. However, even though a lot of data is published, only a few citizens are aware of its existence and usefulness, which hinders fulfilling...

Over the past decade, governments around the world have implemented Open Government Data (OGD) policies to make their data publicly available , with collaboration and citizen engagement being one of the main goals. However, even though a lot of data is published, only a few citizens are aware of its existence and usefulness, which hinders fulfillin...

Smart cities aim to improve citizens’ quality of life using technology. Due to their size, smart city projects often rely on dedicated software that is built using development methodologies and modelling languages. This paper aims at discovering what software development methodologies and modelling languages are being used in a Smart City context a...

Smart cities refer to the application of information and communication technologies to improve the quality of life of citizens. Smart city projects may fail if citizens do not actively participate in their design. In smart cities, this participation often occurs through dedicated participation platforms where citizens can vote, discuss, and submit...

Open government data (OGD) refers to data made available online by governments for anyone to freely reuse. Non-expert users, however, lack the necessary technical skills and therefore face challenges when trying to exploit it. Amongst these challenges, finding useful datasets for citizens is very difficult as their expectations are not always ident...

E-participation enables citizens to have an impact on policy-making through electronic means. Two of the most popular channels are social media and dedicated e-participation platforms. However, the ideas, comments, discussions of citizens on these two channels generate a lot of data to be processed by political representatives or public agents afte...

Open government data (OGD) refers to data made available online by governments for anyone to freely reuse. Non-expert users, however, lack the necessary technical skills and therefore face challenges when trying to exploit it. Amongst these challenges, finding useful datasets for citizens is very difficult as their expectations are not always ident...

Purpose: Governments around the world engage in digitalization projects to improve their internal functioning and the delivery of information and services to their users, including citizens. There are several ways to implement this digitalization and, therefore, different roles for citizens, who can be considered as customers, as participants, and...

Modern cities currently face numerous challenges related to mobility, waste management, access to resources, etc. Smart Cities integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) to develop innovative solutions that can solve such challenges and create a higher quality of life for their citizens. Two elements need to be considered for smart...

Hackathons are problem-focused programming events that allow conceiving, implementing, and presenting digital innovations. The number of participants is one of the key success factors of hackathons. In order to maximize that number, it is essential to understand what motivates people to participate. Previous work on the matter focused on quantitati...

Public organizations in the role of publishers publish data for anyone to reuse, which can lead to benefits. However, the process descriptions for this publishing work focus on one or a few issues, which leaves out important areas and decisions. Little seems to be known about variations between publishers based on one common point of comparison. Th...

Public organizations in the role of publishers publish data for anyone to reuse, which can lead to benefits. However, the process descriptions for this publishing work focus on one or a few issues, which leaves out important areas and decisions. Little seems to be known about variations between publishers based on one common point of comparison. Th...

Hackathons are problem-focused programming events that allow conceiving, implementing, and presenting digital innovations. The number of participants is one of the key success factors of hackathons. In order to maximize that number, it is essential to understand what motivates people to participate. Previous work on the matter focused on quantitati...

More and more cities aim to solve their urban challenges by implementing various smart city initiatives. Involving citizens in the design of these projects has proven to be an essential precondition for a successful outcome. Therefore, citizen participation in the context of smart cities has gained a considerable attention by researchers and practi...

Purpose The purpose of this research is to study how current research reports reflect on using public displays in the smart city. In particular, it looks at the state-of-the-art of this domain from two angles. On the one hand, it investigates the participation of citizens in the development of public displays. On the other hand, it aims at understa...

Questionnaire and Interview Guide used to collect data from hackathon participants about motivators, demotivators and potential for citizen participation.

In the last decades, governments have strongly increased their use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve the service delivery towards their users. However, this development of ICT solutions must be performed in collaboration with the users so that the e-government services are aligned with their requirement and needs. Gathe...

In the last few years, smart cities have attracted considerable attention because they are considered a response to the complex chal-lenges that modern cities face. However, smart cities often do not optimally reach their objectives if the citizens, the end-users, are not involved in their design. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework to...

Governments around the world now use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to improve the delivery of services and information to their users. In the literature, the application of ICT in this context is known as “e(lectronic)-government”. Similarly to other industries, governments have also seen the evolution of the governance model: IC...

Nowadays, smart city is a term recurring in many political discourses and in literature. Indeed, smart cities provide innovative solutions to solve urban issues. However, this concept and its implications remain obscure to the larger public. In order to help younger citizens understand what lies behind the smart city, we developed a workshop aiming...

User participation is often reported as a success factor for public e-service development. However, in practice, project managers face challenges to involve users due to lack of methodology, time, or context awareness. In order to tackle this lack of context awareness, we describe a conceptual model summarizing the impact of four influencing factor...

Developing innovative and flexible public e-services, capable of adapting to the citizens' changing needs, has become crucial for public administrations. To help them with these challenges, the FLEXPUB research project aims at developing a federal Strategy for the implementation of flexible and innovative geographical public e-services. In order to...

Open Government Data (OGD) is interoperable data that is published on the Internet by public organizations and can be freely used and redistributed by users. OGD is expected to result in several benefits, such as innovative products and services , collective problem solving, and equal access to information. However, several impediments complicate t...

New developments in information and communications technologies can enable governments to improve their internal functioning as well as the services they offer to users. This transformation entails several hurdles that have been discussed extensively in existing literature. However, challenges are rarely ranked in terms of importance leaving practi...

As citizens have more and more opportunities to participate in public life, it is essential that administrations integrate this participation in their e-government processes. A smarter, more participatory, governance is a well-recognized and essential part of any city that wants to become “Smart” and generate public value. In this chapter, we will...

In recent years, information and communication technologies (ICT) have allowed governments to improve their internal functioning and to improve the delivery of information and services to their users. This application of ICT in governments has been conceptualized as "e-government". However, more recently, smart cities emerged as a locally-embedded...

E-government historically refers to the use of information and communication technologies to improve the delivery of information and services by government to its users. However, in the last years, both research and practice have tried to identify what will be the "next stage" of e-government. Although some advocate for a continuous improvement of...

. Ces dernières années, les villes intelligentes (ou smart cities) sont devenues très populaires car elles apportent de nouvelles solutions dans les domaines de la vie de tous les jours. Cependant, peu d’initiatives ont été mises en place pour sensibiliser les citoyens et en particulier les enfants. Nous présentons un atelier à destination des ense...

E-government refers to the use of Information and Communication Technologies by governments to deliver their information and services in an optimal way. For a long time, traditional systems development methods such as the waterfall model have been prevailing in the development of e-government services. However, these methods fail to welcome the cha...

Several techniques can be used to solve multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems and to provide a global ranking of the alternatives considered. However, in a context with a high number of alternatives and where decision criteria relate to soft goals, the decision problem is particularly hard to solve. This paper analyzes the use of artificia...

E-government is becoming a mature research field thanks to the proliferation of papers about this changing paradigm. Among this research, the participation of citizens in e-government is a topic that has particularly stimulated numerous discussions. This participation (referred to as " e-participation ") is often reduced to the democratic participa...

During the last years, smart cities have attracted considerable attention because they are considered a response to the complex challenges that modern cities face. Smart cities provide new solutions in the domains of mobility, environment, economy, governance, quality of life, and education thanks to the innovative use of Information and Communicat...