On May 3-4 2023, the World Bank’s Governance Global Practice organised the first GovTech Forum in Washington, D.C., at the World Bank headquarters. The event hosted lots of inspiring discussions with innovators from the private, public and academic sectors from all around the world. Two of the many highlights were the World Café on Bhutan’s modular approach to building IFMIS (presented by Savinay Grover, Senior Financial Management Specialist, World Bank) and the deep dive session “Building a Data-driven Public Sector” with panellists

- Charlotte van Ooijen, Associate Director Digital Government, Lisbon Council
- Esther Agelan, Supreme Court Judge, Supreme Court of Justice, Dominican Republic
- Catherine Nikolovski, Executive Director, CivicTech Software Foundation
- Yongsuk Lee, Director General of Public Data Policy, Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Republic of Korea
- Chiara Bronchi, Practice Manager, World Bank
and moderated by Nuole (Lula) Chen, Research Scientist, MIT GOV/LAB

Verena Dorner had the honour of speaking on the panel at the deep dive session “Whole-of-Government Approaches for Coherent and Sustainable GovTech Policies” with fellow panellists

- Adrian Fozzard, Practice Manager, World Bank (Opening remarks)
- Olga Tumuruc, Director of e-Governance Agency, Moldova
- Rachel Tsang, Deputy Director, Digital Identity, Government Digital Service
- João Dias, President of the Board, Agency for Administrative Modernization (AMA), Portugal
- Karime Ruibal, Citizens Services Director, Electronic Government and Information and Knowledge Society Agency (AGESIC), Uruguay
and moderated by João Ricardo Vasconcelos, Senior Governance Specialist, World Bank

We are very happy to have been part of the event and look forward to continue the discussions and research ideas that the Forum inspired!
Interested to learn more? See a video of some of the Forum discussions here

The scientific commission for Strategic Management of the German Academic Association of Business Research (VHB) organised the workshop „Strategies for the future in research and teaching“ at EBS Business School, Oestrich-Winkel, Germany (https://vhbonline.org/wk-/-fachgruppen/aktuelle-meldungen).
The opening plenary panel, moderated by Prof. Miriam Flickinger (FU Berlin), sparked lively discussions on the role of AI in teaching and research with panellist Verena Dorner, the future of universities with Dr. Thomas Funke (CEO Tomorrow University) and about the relevance of strategic management research for practice with Marcel Kling (Head of Digital Sales for Lufthansa Cargo).
The beautiful surroundings of the Rheingau valleys and an evening event at famous Kloster Eberbach were a wonderful environment for exchanging experiences and insights on how AI is shaping education and work, and where we as university educators and researchers see benefits and challenges ahead.

Congratulations to now Dr. Hakan Pusmaz for successfully defending his doctoral thesis at KIT, Germany! Verena Dorner co-supervised his thesis “Engineering adaptive interfaces” with Prof. Dr. Christof Weinhardt (KIT) and is proud to have accompanied him all the way to achieving his doctoral degree!
Well done and all the best in your future career as data scientist at dmTECH!

At the first Digital Economy Workshop, we enjoyed many inspiring presentations and lively discussions. Verena Dorner had the pleasure to serve as discussant for the working paper “Complementor Reactions to Platform Control – Evidence from the YouTube “Adpocalypse”” (Lena Abou El-Komboz, Anna Kerkhof and Johannes Loh). A big thank you to Christian Peukert (HEC Lausanne) for organizing the workshop – already looking forward to the next one! In the meantime, check out the regular online talk series of the Digital Economy Network at https://www.digitalecon.org/seminar

The Institute for Digital Ecosystems (Department of Information Systems and Operations Management) hosted the 2^nd iteration with the continued support of the ISOM Department. We also got the opportunity to introduce our visiting researcher Maike Althaus (University of Paderborn, Germany) to the other institutes and departments of WU.
As the weather gets warmer, we are excited for more PhD Network events to come!

We are delighted to announce that Verena Dorner has joined the Journal Decision Support Systems as Associate Editor.

I was very honored to be asked to contribute to the panel discussion on “From e-Government to m-Government” on 13 March 2023 at the launch event for the World Bank “How-to-Note: Establishing Sustainable Mobile Government”. Thank you, Gerhard Embacher-Köhle (BRZ, Note co-author), for the invitation! Together with Florian Tursky (BMF), Arturo Herrera Gutierrez (WB Global Governance Director), and Khuram Farooq (mGov Note co-author), moderated by Roby Senderowitsch (WB), we had an lively discussion on how the digital transformation will change the accessibility, efficiency and effectiveness of public services.

Interested? Watch the video!

Welcome, Maike! Maike Althaus is visiting the Institute for Digital Ecosystems from Paderborn University. Maike is research assistant at the Chair of Business Information Systems, esp. Digital Markets. Her research focuses on Digital platforms and ecosystems.

Verena Dorner was invited to present her research at the CBS workshop on Digital Ecosystems, organized by Prof. Attila Márton. On Jan 19, 2023, she presented her research on individual decision-making and strategic interactions in the domain of (digital) cities, and gave an outlook on future research into cities as (digital) ecosystems. A lively discussion on understanding and designing cities around the needs of its citizens, and how digital ecosystems models and frameworks can help in creating more liveable and lovable cities, followed. Thanks to Prof. Márton for the invitation, and thanks to everyone for the warm welcome, it was a great and thought-provoking experience!

The Digital Economy master students of the 2021 cohort presented the results of their semester-long projects in our Lab Closing Event. Lab partners ÖBB and WKÖ, alumni, lecturers and students from the next cohort enjoyed entertaining elevator pitches. The 2021 students did a great job, congratulations! More in-depth discussions and networking followed at the poster session

In December, I attended the International Conference on Information Systems 2022 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference theme was “Digitization for the Next Generation”. This was the 2nd in-person conference which I attended as a PhD student and I was thrilled to reconnect with the Information Systems community again in person. With over 1600 attendees from 53 countries, it was a truly international conference. I particularly enjoyed the topics presented on live-streaming, user behaviour on online communities and digital marketing.

On December 1, 2022 Verena Dorner was appointed Academic Director of the MBA program in “Digital Transformation & Data Science” at the WU Executive Academy. She brings her expertise in the fields of data science, digital platforms and ecosystems, and human-computer interaction to the program. Congratulations!

As part of the newly founded PhD Network, Kenneth Qua of the Institute for Digital Ecosystems organized the very first Praedoc Christmas Market Crawl. The event brought together new and current praedocs across various institutes and departments at WU for some Glühwein and festive merrymaking!
If you are a new praedoc at WU, feel free to contact Kenneth Qua to get connected with the PhD Network.

BRZ organised a wonderful networking and innovation event at the interdisciplinary research space “Café exchange” (Kassenhalle der alten Postsparkasse), and the Institute for Digital Ecosystems was invited.

Great discussions and new insights, we are looking forward to future events and collaborations!

In November, the colleagues of the Institute for Digital Ecosystems visited the Museum of Illusions. With fun, humor and cell phones we experienced the impossible.

We are happy to welcome Daniel Schnurr, Professor for Machine Learning and Uncertainty Quantification at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and research fellow at the think thank Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE). His guest talk on “Do Consumers Benefit from Selling their Data? The Economic Effects of Personal Data Brokers in Digital Markets” will take place on Wednesday, 23 November 2022, 4 pm at TC.0.04
You are very welcome to join us for the talk!

Starting 1 October 2022, Verena Dorner will exchange the role of deputy for program director of the new Master’s program “Digital Economy”.

In 2023, the first master cohort will graduate and the third cohort will start the program. We wish all our students continued success! Apply for the program here

Verena Dorner moderiert am Montag, 16.5.2022 um 12:45 ein Panel zur „Digital Economy“ mit Fokus auf der Regulierung von Datenmonetarisierung und Digitalen Plattformen. Podiumsgäste sind Univ.Prof. Christoph Krönke (WU Wien), Michael Schramm, MSc. (E&Y), Mag.a Susanne Stein-Pressl (manz.at) und Hans Linus Pfau, BSc. (VERBUND). Wir freuen uns auf einen spannenden Austausch! Die Veranstaltung „WU Alumni Future Talks 2022“ beginnt um 12 Uhr mit einem Impulsvortrag von Dr. Helmut Reisinger (CEO EMEA und LATAM, Palo Alto Networks). Read more
 

Welcome, Anke! Anke Greif-Winzrieth is visiting the Institute for Digital Ecosystems from KIT (Karlsruher Institute of Technology), Germany.
Anke is the lab manager of the Karlsruhe Decision & Design Lab (KD²Lab) at KIT. Her research focuses on behavioral economics, immersive systems, and Digital Citizen Science.

We are very happy to have her at the Institute, and wish her a productive stay!

The WIP „The Pulse Of Impulse Buying: An experimental study on the effects of background music tempo on impulse buying” has been accepted for presentation at the European Conference on Information Systems 2022.

Congratulations, Kenneth Qua and Fabio Stano (KIT, Germany) who co-authored the paper with Verena Dorner.

The paper “New measurement analysis for emotion detection using ECG data” has been accepted for presentation at the NeuroIS retreat 2022! Congratulations, Cesar Enrique Uribe Ortiz and Verena Dorner!