Current decision making processes are far from being optimal to represent the best interests of the public and stakeholders, as contemporary policy domains are very complex, high dimensional and include a large dose of uncertainty. The massive amounts of data captured in our physical world through sensors and electronic
devices provide a huge potential to advance these processes. With the availability of new technologies, new formulations are needed on fundamental questions such as how to conduct a census, how to produce labour statistics, or how to incorporate data mined from social media and administrative operations. Efficient procedures to draw links between large scale data processing technologies and existing expert knowledge in major policy domains would potentially offer chances to make policy development processes more citizen-focused, taking into account public needs and preferences supported with actual experiences of public services. This however comes with serious privacy and security concerns as intersecting various data sources could reveal unprecedented private information. The conference committee invited contributions
covering the following topics:
• Information and evidence in digital age
• Policy-making mechanisms and modelling approaches
• Existing methodologies, case studies, best practices for use of Big Data in policy
• Data collection, storage, processing and access procedures
• Cumulative learning in digital environments, potentials in policy context, challenges and limitations
• Interaction of domain expertise with digital processing technologies; dealing with imperfect/uncertain data; psychology/behaviour of decision
• Security and privacy issues; ethics and law
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