Innovation Policy Roadmapping for the Future Finnish Smart City Digital Twins : Towards Finland National Digital Twin Programme

Smart City Digital Twins (SCDTs) emerge as a transforming concept with the ability to redefine the future of cities in the fast-paced evolving landscape of urban development. This qualitative futures research explores thoroughly into the complex interaction of socio-technical dynamics in the Finnish setting, investigating the several ways SCDTs might revolutionise urban spaces and create resilience. By utilizing Innovation Policy Roadmapping (IPRM) method for the first time on SCDTs, it reveals the diverse capacities of SCDTs across domains such as urban planning, scenario developing, What-IF analysis, and public involvement through a rigorous examination of academic literature and multi-level analysis of expert interviews. The research emphasises the critical role of policymakers and sectoral actors in building an environment that allows Finnish SCDTs to survive in the face of technological improvements. Furthermore, it emphasises the convergence of SCDTs and Futures Studies approaches, giving a visionary path to adaptable and forward-thinking urban futures. The contributions of this study extend beyond the scope of Finnish SCDTs, giving inspiration for sustainable smart city transformations, potential foundational insights towards Finland National Digital Twin Programme and paving the way for the incorporation of futures studies methodologies and digital twins to mitigate uncertainties and create resilient urban futures. Longitudinal impact assessments, real-time citizen-centric foresight applications via SCDT, and the investigation of SCDTs' role in disaster mitigation and social well-being are among the identified future research directions, providing a comprehensive roadmap for leveraging SCDTs as transformative tools for building sustainable urban futures

From Associations to Info-Sociations: Civic associations and ICTs in Two Asian Cities

Non-profit civic associations are experimenting with information communications technologies (ICTs) in their work inside ‘global cities.’ The “info-sociational” concept is introduced in this paper as a heuristic and an approach for investigating ICT-linked organizational, participatory and spatial transformations in civic associations. The info-sociational approach is applied to four cases of civic environmental associations in two ‘Asian tiger’ cities-Hong Kong and Taipei-to compare their experiments with: urban map mash-ups; digital storytelling; participatory e-platforms; green new media; and networked activism. An info-sociational approach-besides providing a frame for comparatively analyzing digital practices amongst civic groups-arguably advances theory on the co-evolution of civic associations and ICTs.Special Issue: Linking the Local with the Global within Community Informatic

Summer 2009 Vol. 11 No. 1

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The anatomy of ICT policies for development and education implementation - the case of secondary schools in Ghana

Research on the integration of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the Ghanaian secondary schools tends to focus on computers and the potential benefits of using them. This study proposes a way of understanding ICTs in the Ghanaian secondary schools by examining the work of two ICT policies: Information Communication Technologies for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) and Information Communication Technologies in Education (ICTED) in terms of the process of the formulation and the impact of the formulation process on implementation. By understanding policy as a collection of texts and discourses that include objectives and intentions mostly known only to the policymaker and rarely known (if at all) to the policy implementer, this study proposes a culture of policy formulation that is inclusive of implementers, as well as a technology culture that is implementer centred. The intention of the ICT4AD and ICTED policies of Ghana, launched in 2003 and 2008 respectively, was to equip the citizenry with the capability of using the ICT skills they acquired both formally and informally to effectively perform in the global knowledge economy, thereby transforming Ghana into a knowledge economy. This intention, as this research confirmed, is now far from being achieved within the 12-year period set in the ICT4AD policy. The reasons for the unsuccessful implementation of the ICT4AD and ICTED policies, as this research unveils, include, non-engagement of policy implementers (secondary school teachers) from the outset of the policy formulation. In the cases of the schools involved in this study, the intended implementers of the ICTED and ICT4AD policies have never seen the policies. The first time the implementers have actually seen the policies was during my interviews with them. Respondents were also not engaged during the formulation of the policies. The schools, therefore, did not have any policy of their own to guide the integration of ICT into the curriculum. Combining case study, discourse analysis, and grounded theory approaches through semi-structured focus-group interviews, survey and textual analysis data, I conclude that in Ghana, it is important that policy implementers take ownership of policies as facilitators of effective implementation. To achieve policy ownership among implementers and to ensure that such policies so formulated are implemented for the intended purpose, I recommend the use of commonality capital as a currency to drive stakeholder engagement in policy-formulation dialogue from the outset to avoid a situation where policies are formulated and never get implemented

E-Government: Transformation of Public Governance in New Zealand?

New information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been introduced in the government sector throughout the world in the past 10 - 20 years in an attempt to achieve greater operational efficiency and effectiveness. The benefits of ICTs include faster, streamlined administrative processing; lower transaction costs; better use of information resources; greater public access to government information and services; and more opportunities for public participation in democratic processes. These changes are often heralded by e-government commentators as "transformative'.This implies that technical innovation will deliver business benefits and produce radical change in the way that government agencies are organised to service parliament and the public. That is, a change in state sector governance arrangements. This thesis examines the concept of 'transformation' in the New Zealand state sector context with a view to determining the form and nature of governance changes that may occur as a consequence of e-government implementation. Two streams of empirical data gathering have been completed. These provide data on how e-government initiatives are currently being implemented in New Zealand, and the impact senior public officials and public management experts consider e-government will have in the future. A Weberian analytical framework is used to identify the nature of changes that occur as a consequence of e-government initiatives, and where changes may occur in the current public sector governance model. The empirical evidence suggests that e-government will have two transformational effects in New Zealand: instrumental and systemic. These effects will occur as public officials use ICTs to increase operational efficiency and effectiveness; develop broad-based collaboration and co-production working arrangements; and expand the resources available to government to address policy issues and delivery services. Adjustments to current governance arrangements are required to position public officials to use communication technologies effectively in the future. Initial reform efforts need to be made in the areas of accountability structures and leadership

La transformación a la virtualidad de un curso en educación superior mejora el desempeño académico estudiantil

Pandemic-forced remote teaching has highlighted the relevance of redesigning planification in order to transform face-to-face into online courses in higher education. Indeed, the type of e-learning activities, e-assessment and development of student-centred active learning tasks remains a challenge. In this work we investigated the academic performance of an online learning environment in a course with high number of enrolled students carried out in the pandemic context in 2020 and compared it to the 2019 face-to-face version of the course. The e-learning version of the course included some changes regarding the face-to-face to allow active student learning, digital learning environment, knowledge enforcement, and further exploitation of the available activities in the Moodle platform as for the face-to-face course, although the syllabus remained unchanged. This study finds both synchronous and asynchronous problem-solving based e-learning together with self-assessment and team-based continuous and individual questionnaire assessments to be valuable instructional methods that allowed higher student academic performance in comparison to the face-to-face academic student results. Furthermore, the academic performance was directly related to the student participation in both team-based and individual activities during the course, demonstrating that the adaptation of the face-to-face course to the e-learning environment was, at least, as efficient as the traditional course, despite student resistance to e-learning and e-assessment.La enseñanza remota en línea forzada por la pandemia ha puesto en evidencia la necesidad de rediseñar la planificación de los cursos presenciales a su versión en línea de manera adecuada en la educación superior. De hecho, el tipo de actividades y evaluaciones en línea (digitales), sigue siendo un desafío en la educación universitaria. En este trabajo, investigamos la eficiencia de la transformación de un curso universitario de alta matrícula estudiantil presencial a modo en línea a través del estudio del desempeño académico estudiantil. La versión en línea del curso fue llevada a cabo durante el segundo semestre del año 2020 a través de la creación de un espacio de aprendizaje virtual y comparando el desempeño académico de los estudiantes con el obtenido durante la versión presencial del año 2019, en función a su participación en las actividades de evaluación continua. Se favoreció el aprendizaje activo por parte del estudiante, generando un ambiente digital de aprendizaje amigable, favoreciendo las instancias de autoevaluación, y respetando el currículo del curso. Este estudio muestra que las actividades en línea, tanto de forma asincrónica como sincrónica, basadas en la resolución de problemas, en conjunto con actividades continuas evaluables grupales e individuales, resultaron estrategias educativas valiosas que permitieron una mejora en el rendimiento académico estudiantil, demostrando que la incorporación de actividades digitales adecuadas fue tan eficiente como el curso tradicional, a pesar de la alta resistencia estudiantil a la continuidad de la enseñanza en línea y a la evaluación digital

Learning, technologies, and time in the age of global neoliberal capitalism

Though diverse in nature, the articles in this collection discuss both socio-cultural and temporal transformations linked to technology and learning and can be classified into three broad themes. The first theme is interested in temporal experiences within time and learning; the second theme is about practical implementations of these concerns, and the third theme inquires into relationships between our understanding of time and human nature. In many articles, the boundaries between these themes are blurred and fluid. Yet, this general classification does indicate the present state of the art in studies of time, technology and education

Fast forwarding higher education institutions for global challenges

This book addresses various 21st century questions and challenges, especially the role of technology in upgrading teaching and learning in today’s society, and the role of higher education institutions in improving standards of living, economics, society and sustainability. It shares with readers the challenges of globalization to higher institutions concerning the issues relating to value creation management, branding and the impact on leadership in higher institutions

Redefining Leadership in the Age of the SDGs: Accelerating and Scaling Up Delivery Through Innovation and Inclusion

In 2015 the United Nations adopted seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote prosperity while protecting the environment. Our research examines how the SDGs, considered the grandest vision for sustainable development for the world, can be accelerated by ambitious leaders in the field of innovation. Through careful selection based on the type of industry, scale, impact, and diversity, we study a cohort of bold leaders who are shaping a brave new world. In turn, the urgent charge of the SDGs provides a platform and an innovation lab to incubate new ideas for inclusion and technologies