Digi-Front Projects
Below you can read about the four different projects
Artefacts
The artefacts project investigates the research questions: How is open-source government code shared through code repositories such as GitHub, and which politics are imported with open-source code?
Tracing the ecosystems of government open-source code allows a peek into the engine room of government, where decisions impacting citizens and states are constructed and negotiated by software developers and public servants, offering insights into the circulation of the infrastructural components of public digitalization. The main site for the project is GitHub; an online open-source code repository where developers share source-code and engage in technical discussions. Combining two core STS method traditions, ethnography and digital methods (Rogers 2019), the project seeks to map interactions on GitHub using digital tools for scraping, analyzing and visualizing online data traces.
The mapping is supplemented by a digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2016) of GitHub discussion fora and interviews with developers and public servants involved in IT development about how they share and understand code. Output 1 single- and 2 co-authored articles (Big Data & Society, Journal of Digital Social Research), and a data sprint hosted by AAU’s TANTlab.
If you want to hear more, get in touch with assistant professor Alexei Tsinovoi, professor Anders Munk or PhD student Lasse Uhrskov Kristensen.
Expertise
This project is case study with a content analysis and deep read, with a specific focus on the UK, which centers around the research question: How do forms of organizational expertise become widely circulating models of digital government, and how does the day-to-day exchange of knowledge take place?
We seek to examine how public digitalization expertise ascribed value in the everyday practice of digitalization professionals, as expertise and know-how travels across borders and between public and private sectors. We will study the internationalization team at the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) which provides consultancy to governments in developing countries.
If you are curious to learn more, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Associate Professor Jessamy Perriam.
Events
This project is case study with a content analysis and deep read, with a specific focus on the UK, which centers around the research question: How do forms of organizational expertise become widely circulating models of digital government, and how does the day-to-day exchange of knowledge take place?
We seek to examine how public digitalization expertise ascribed value in the everyday practice of digitalization professionals, as expertise and know-how travels across borders and between public and private sectors. We will study the internationalization team at the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) which provides consultancy to governments in developing countries.
If you are curious to learn more, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Associate Professor Jessamy Perriam.
Synthesis
The fourth project is a synthesis of the findings from the case studies. Here, we seek to bring our empirical insights into analytical conversation, creating connection between the different points of observation.
Through a method of lateral comparison, we consider the three countries and their transnational engagements as taking place in a “transversal field of practices in which scales of local, national and transnational overlap and intersect” (School et al. 2016, 4; Papazu & Nelund 2018).
The subproject will strengthen the outputs of the other individual projects , and produce a co-authored book aimed at an audience of both practitioners and academics presenting the project’s findings.