Fwd: CFP: Open Source and Public Sector

Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:30:55 -0400
From: "Sawhney,  Harmeet Singh" <hsawhneyindiana.edu>
Subject: CFP:  Open Source and Public Sector
To: supressed


CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue of

The Information Society

on

Open Source and Public Sector: Discourse, Politics and
Practice

Guest Editors: Jan Ljungberg, Magnus Bergquist and Anna
Maria Szczepanska


In the last ten years the Open Source (OS) and Free Software
(FS)
movement has come to challenge the norms and ideals,
products and
procedures of the dominant proprietary software industry.
OS/FS
represents a radically different logic within the field of
software
development. This logic is based on ideas that celebrate the
rights of
the user and informational freedoms and resist strong
intellectual
property laws and regulations. In addition to gaining ground
in the
commercial software market, the OS/FS-movement is also
establishing
itself as an interesting alternative for the public sector.
Currently,
discussions regarding OS/FS procurement and policy-making
are taking
place within governments and public sector organizations all
over the
world. The OS/FS-technologies advocates have promoted them
on the basis
of their potential cost-benefits, their value as ?a public
good,? their
egalitarian and digital divide-bridging qualities and so
forth. But the
public sector initiatives still seem somewhat hesitant. The
OS/FS in
public sector discussions and policy-making processes
represent a
discourse still very much in the making.

This special issue will provide an opportunity for
researchers to
present valuable insights at an early stage about a relevant
topic that
crosscuts the information technology and policy processes
and OS/FS
movement?s institutionalization processes. We hope to bring
together
insights from multiple areas, such as political science,
sociology,
economics, IS-research, media studies, policy studies and
cultural
studies. Discourse analysis and case studies would both be
welcome
analytical strategies to provide breadth to the special
issue.

Contributions could include the following:

-  Papers identifying and discussing how underlying norms,
values and
practices inscribed in OS/FS and proprietary software are
understood
and dealt with in public sector discourse.

- Case studies on evolving policies and laws related to Open
Source /
Free Software in the public sector.

- Papers analyzing the rhetoric on the pros and cons of
OS/FS in the
public sector.

- Papers identifying and analyzing the way actors (e.g. the
media,
business groups, academia, consumers, NGO?s, SMO?s,
transnational
advocacy networks) are organizing in order to influence,
support or
criticize policy processes and other activities relating to
the
dispersal of OS/FS products and ideas in public sector.

The guest editors invite abstracts by September 1, 2007,
which should
be sent to anmarituniv.se.  Authors with the most to offer
to the
dialogue will be invited to contribute full papers, which
will go
through the normal review process of the journal. For more
information
on TIS guidelines, please refer to:

http://www.indiana.edu/~tisj/contributors/guest%20
editors.html
-- 

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