Conference Co-Chair Yigal Arens (DGRC, USC Information Sciences Institute)

Conference Co-Chair Eduard Hovy (DGRC, USC Information Sciences Institute)

Program Chair Peggy Agouris (University of Maine)

It is a pleasure to welcome you to dg.o2003, the third annual National Conference on Digital Government Research. dg.o2003 is the only national conference that brings together researchers in computer and social sciences, government officials and employees, representatives of industry and members of the public to investigate how computers and computer networks can improve all aspects of interaction between citizens and government.

This year's conference was the first one not held in Los Angeles. As befitting a growing national professional conference, starting this year it will move from city to city, hosted by different participants in the digital government community. Peggy Agouris of the University of Maine is this year's program chair. After working for several years to help get the digital government conference and community on its feet, the Digital Government Research Center is happy and grateful to see others start the process of taking over these responsibilities.

Thanks to the contributions of so many from the digital government community and the hard work of the program committee we have an excellent program this year. Once again the conference has grown. We received more than 100 submissions, of which we accepted 16 long papers, 30 short papers, and 17 posters. We also accepted 27 system demonstrations and, for the student session 5 papers. This necessitated a full program with three parallel tracks. While this will mean, unfortunately, that not all sessions can be attended, the alternative was to reject the great majority of proposed talks and panels. The increasing number of high-quality submissions is a welcome sign of the dynamism of NSF's Digital Government research program.

As in prior years, dg.o2003 features interesting case studies that showcase notably successful partnerships of government and research, and panels on topics as diverse as environmental protection, transportation, biodiversity, and open source software. All these show the potential of digital government in a wide variety of fields and hopefully will suggest new research projects and partnerships.

Several things are new this year. For the first time we featured representatives of the international digital government community. On Monday, heard from a panel that includes specialists from Asia and Europe. Digital government is by no means restricted to the US, and we hope to see more international participation in years to come.

A welcome new trend is the increasing number of papers on social studies and public policy issues, which complement the research on information technology and are a direct result of the NSF's outreach into these communities. A panel about electronic rulemaking will discuss exciting new opportunities for government-researcher collaboration.

This year's keynote speaker, Professor Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder and chair of MIT's Media Lab, needs no introduction. The Media Lab is famous as a center of innovative research in fields ranging from cognition and learning to electronic music and holography.

We are grateful to Dr. Negroponte for his talk, and for our visit to the Media Lab, one of three field trips on Wednesday afternoon. The other two trips, equally stimulating, were to Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and to the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. The Kennedy School is the largest professional school of public policy in the world. The Volpe Center is an internationally recognized center of transportation and logistics expertise. We would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the many others who have made essential contributions to this conference.

We would like to thank the Program Committee, whose members reviewed the many papers and provided valuable feedback in a very short time. We are also grateful to Mack Reed (DGRC and USC/ISI) for helping with conference planning and for managing the conference website, to Kristin Eickhorst (University of Maine) for organizing the student session, to Andrew Philpot (DGRC and USC/ISI) for the registration software and to Kary Lau (USC/ISI) for administrative support. In addition, this year we have for the first time engaged the services of a professional conference manager. Priscilla Rasmussen has extensive experience with research organizations and their conferences, and we are glad to have her on board.

As in prior years, one individual has played an absolutely key role. Without her engagement, enthusiasm and hard work this conference series would simply not exist. Valerie Gregg, the NSF Program Manager for Digital Government has been tireless and indispensable. We thank her for her advice, suggestions and ideas for interesting things to include, and for incessantly prodding us to do our best.

In conclusion, let us not forget that while we are meeting here to improve digital interaction, there is as yet no replacement for personal contact. We arranged for breaks and common lunches and evening sessions to facilitate collaboration in the development of great new ideas. We expect to see the results of these at dg.o2004 and other future digital government conferences!