SWEG – Scandinavian Workshop on E-Government

SWEG, the Scandinavian Workshop on E-Government, was established in 2003 in Örebro for the purpose of giving Scandinavian PhD students from different disciplines with a research focus on the digitalization of government an arena for discussing their research in an interdisciplinary environment.

Over 20-years, the workshop has gathered researchers from all Scandinavian countries in the disciplines of, mainly, informatics, sociology, political science, media and communication studies, and computer science.

Some topics have changed over the years – 20-years ago digitalization was much about web presence, later about process effectivization and user/citizen self-service, and today much focus is on automation and artificial intelligence; hence the SWEG 2023 theme “From automation to AI”.

Increasingly, also on the risks and threats that come with a digital infrastructure, technical as well as social, have become apparent, including cyberattacks and infiltration via social media.

But throughout the period, core issues concerning the government-citizen relations have been on the agenda – transparency and accountability, privacy and security, trust and generally the citizen-government relations.The multidisciplinary workshop SWEG  is a good platform for discussing social and technical aspects of government digitalization.

The conference convenes some 40 participants and includes both keynotes from practitioners in the field and senior researchers and workshops where students’ work-in-progress is discussed.

Students in early phases can present their research proposals, student at later stages present their studies or papers-in-progress and get feedback from both peers and senior researchers.

The purpose is not just general feedback but preparing publications for scientific journals or major international conferences