PhD Symposium

Effective governance is strictly interconnected with trust in public institutions, the efficiency of public sector reforms and is a prerequisite for successfully meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Knowledge can be mobilized and recombined either by drawing on the experience of the actors involved in governance or as expertise provided by outsiders.

Knowledge systems need to build on rich and nuanced, but ultimately usable data.

• The importance of disseminating knowledge.

• The importance of making knowledge accessible to all.

• The importance of data quality.

Key themes addressed by PhD students:

• Performance management in action

• Digital government

• Citizen engagement and co-production

• Ethics and equity

During IIAS-EUROMENA 2022 Conference, the first PhD Seminar at an IIAS Conference was also held. It aimed at gathering PhD Students in the field of public management, public administration, political science, and administrative and public law and featured 23 presentations.

Denita Cepiku (Tor Vergata University of Rome) organised the seminar and gave a keynote speech on the importance of developing the habit of writing every day. She provided the audience of PhD students and young researchers with practical and concrete advice to improve their writing skills.

• Write on a blank page

• Line-edit something you have already written

• Restructure a paper that you have been working on

• Pull together pieces of older documents you have written into a new paper

• Create an ‘after-the-fact’ or reverse outline!

• Check footnotes and references

• Outline or mind-map a new project

• Summarize or take note of something you have read

• Make tables, figures, graphs, or images to illustrate concepts or trends!

• Revise and resubmit a rejected paper

In the parallel sessions, participants discussed their research projects and engaged in intensive interactions with peers and distinguished international scholars.

Manuela Barreca (Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland) chaired a parallel session of the doctoral seminar on Digital transformation, PA, and Citizen e-participation.

Andrea Bonomi Savignon (University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy) discussed the papers of young researchers on Accounting and Performance information used by politicians, performance information use in the local government, and the pivotal role of partnership and education for sustainable development.

Marco Mastrodacio (University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy) chaired a session of the doctoral seminar with papers on the intellectual capital and intensive knowledge in healthcare organisations, public finance, quality of public expenditure, and accounting standard for heritage assets in public financial reports.

Nathalie Colasanti (University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy) chaired a session dedicated to Process Mining Application and public & private organization, personnel recruitment and selection in Public Administration, as well as investment readiness in non-metropolitan municipalities.

Enrico Guarini (University of Milano Bicocca, Italy), as chair of another PhD Seminar session, engaged in a debate on public performance. Participants discussed performance measurement of shared local government services and found that a citizen-oriented approach is missing. They observed that digital transformation is relevant for effective citizen engagement and participative evaluation, however, it should go beyond surveying user satisfaction. Future studies should analyse how citizens assess shared services and the drivers for their satisfaction, as well as the impact of digital transformation on citizens' engagement.

The parallel session chaired by Giulia Mugellini (Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland) gathered papers on Representative Bureaucracy and Women’s Involvement in Decision-Making Positions of Public Administration and ethics & performance in the healthcare sector.

Silvia Testarmata (Niccolò Cusano University of Rome, Italy) chaired a session on public management issues regarding urban renewal, urban regeneration, and telemedicine in which participants identified a need for educational improvement and training of public administration employees to handle the grand challenges of sustainability and digitalization. Additionally, future research needs to identify what is art and what is not in order to better define the boundaries of urban renewal; and studies on smart cities would benefit from a multidisciplinary approach.