A better understanding of the drivers, barriers, and effects of collaboration in the digital era may enhance collaboration in policy design and service delivery, thereby impacting efficiency, but also advance the participation of public, private, and societal actors, thereby impacting legitimacy and accountability.

After four and a half years of research carried out by an international team of more than forty researchers across ten countries, how has TROPICO contributed to this understanding, and to the academic debate on collaboration and digitalisation?

This session will explore the impact of the project in terms of research. After an introduction addressing the challenges and opportunities arising from the European dimension of the project, the session will comprise three parts covering the lifespan of the project, presenting the research that was carried out, reflecting on the main take-away message now emerging from the project as a whole, and finally working towards a future research agenda. In that way, it will shift perspective, starting at the level of the individual researchers, moving on to the level of the TROPICO consortium, and ending at the level of the cluster of European research projects in the same call.

After the session, the online conference room will remain open for participants who wish to continue the discussion, network, and socialise.

Lise H. Rykkja, TROPICO Coordinator (University of Bergen)

Lise H. Rykkja is a Professor in Political Science/Public Administration at the Dept. of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, Norway, and the Coordinator of the TROPICO project.

Rykkja has published widely in academic journals and has led and participated in several national and international research projects. She also co-organized, and acted as chair and speaker at a number of international and national conferences.

Her research concentrates on the organization and development of public administration and democratic institutions, public sector management, administrative policies and reforms, based in a broad institutional and comparative perspective. More recently, she also focused on digitalization and the use of ICT in public sector collaboration. Rykkja's academic work includes studies of administrative coordination in the Nordic countries, and public sector policies and government organization for “wicked problems” - including public security, preparedness, crisis management and welfare.

Participants:

Chesney Callens - PhD candidate within the research group of Politics & Public Governance, University of Antwerp, Belgium

Chesney Callens (MSc.) is a PhD candidate within the research group of Politics & Public Governance (Department of Political Sciences) at the University of Antwerp. He holds a master’s degree in Public Administration and Management from the University of Ghent, and worked as a policy consultant in local governments. His research interests are collaborative and network governance, innovation management and collaborative innovation, and strategic management.

Samuel Defacqz - Assistant Professor at the Université Laval, Québec, Canada

Samuel Defacqz is an Assistant Professor in Public Administration at the Université Laval, Québec. Samuel worked on the TROPICO project as a post-doctoral researcher at the UCLouvain (Belgium) and at the CNRS, Sciences Po Grenoble (France). He was involved in different TROPICO work packages and researched topics such as e-participation and financial information system in France. His research interests include digital administration, open government, administrative burden, public policy, interest groups, legitimacy and comparative politics.

Amandine Lerusse - Assistant Professor in Public Administration, Leiden University, the Netherlands

Amandine Lerusse did her PhD research at the KU Leuven in Belgium under the supervision of Prof. dr. Steven Van de Walle. Her PhD research examined the role of governance preferences on public officials’ decision-making in government contracting. Her research has been funded by the H2020 project TROPICO (Transforming into Open, Innovative and Collaborative Governments). She recently published in the Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Local Government Studies, and Government Information Quarterly. Amandine is currently an Assistant Professor in Public Administration at Leiden University.

Participants:

Claire Dupuy - Professor of Comparative Politics, UCLouvain, Belgium 

Claire Dupuy is a professor of comparative politics at the University of Louvain, ISPOLE (Belgium). She specializes in comparative public policy with a focus on multilevel governance, federalism and regionalization processes in Western Europe. She is also interested in policy feedbacks on democracy and how policy changes impact on citizens' (dis)affection toward politics. With the H2020-funded TROPICO consortium in general, and Samuel Defacqz in particular, she studies how public administrations in France have changed to allow for more collaboration within government, on the one hand, and between public actors and citizens and stakeholders, on the other hand.

Gerhard Hammerschmid - Professor of Public Management, Hertie School, Germany

Gerhard Hammerschmid is Professor of Public Management and Director of the Centre for Digital Governance at the Hertie School in Berlin. His research focuses on public management reform, comparative public administration, public sector innovation and government digitalization. Gerhard Hammerschmid has more than 20 years of experience in communicating research findings to high level government officials and policy makers and has been contributing to several cross-European research projects and expertises.

Sara Svensson - Senior Lecturer, Halmstad University, Sweden

Sara Svensson is Senior Lecturer at the Halmstad University. She takes a special research interest in policy formation and governance structures in European cross-border regions and has published on that topic in Eurasian Geography and Economy, Journal of European Integration, Regional & Federal Studies, Territory/Politics/Governance, Regions & Cohesion, Journal of Borderlands Studies and various edited volumes. She is the co-editor of Regional economic development & History, which was published with Routledge in 2019. She is associate editor of the Peace and Democracy Section of the journal Frontiers in Political Science. Sara was engaged in TROPICO in the first two years of the project, primarily in Work Package 2: Transformation of Institutional Conditions of Collaboration.

Participants:

Edoardo Ongaro - Professor of Public Management, The Open University, United Kingdom. COGOV project

Edoardo Ongaro is Professor of Public Management at The Open University, UK. His expertise is in comparative public administration and the public policy-public administration nexus, and he is widely knowledgeable of public management reforms in Europe and other regions of the world. He is Immediate Past President of EGPA, the European Group for Public Administration, having served between 2013-2019 as President of EGPA, the leading learned society in Europe for public administration, public management and public governance studies. He has served in various academic and expert committees and has contributed to numerous international research projects. He is invited to present his research works in universities throughout the world as well as International Organisations like the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) or the World Bank, and the European Commission. He is editor of Public Policy and Administration, a journal of the Joint University Council of the Applied Social Sciences of the UK.

Lise H. Rykkja - Professor in Political Science/Public Administration, University of Bergen, Norway. TROPICO project Coordinator

Lise H. Rykkja is a Professor in Political Science/Public Administration at the Dept. of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, Norway, and the Coordinator of the TROPICO project. Rykkja has published widely in academic journals and has led and participated in several national and international research projects. She also co-organized, and acted as chair and speaker at a number of international and national conferences. Her research concentrates on the organization and development of public administration and democratic institutions, public sector management, administrative policies and reforms, based in a broad institutional and comparative perspective. More recently, she also focused on digitalization and the use of ICT in public sector collaboration. Rykkja's academic work includes studies of administrative coordination in the Nordic countries, and public sector policies and government organization for “wicked problems” - including public security, preparedness, crisis management and welfare.

Luis Rubalcaba - Professor of Economic Policy, University of Alcalá, Spain. Co-VAL project

Keith Shaw - Professor of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, United Kingdom. COGOV project Coordinator

Keith Shaw is Professor of Social Sciences at Northumbria University UK. He is, presently, the Programme Coordinator of the EU Horizon 2020-funded project COGOV which examines the contribution of strategic management to the co-creation of public services across Europe. As a political scientist, his published work has drawn upon funded studies of privatisation and public services, resilient local government, the impact of devolution on public policy, the wider effects of an independent Scotland on the UK and the challenge of Brexit for UK regions. In addition to his academic work, he is a board member of a number of voluntary organisations in the North East of England and a long-suffering follower of a north east football team.