Track Descriptions for ACIS 2024

Track Co-Chairs

• Arzoo Atiq, University of Melbourne 
• Ofir Turel, University of Melbourne
• Sander Zwanburg, University of Otago
• Caddie Gao, Monash University
• Sigi Goode, Australian National University

Description

The General Track welcomes high-quality IS research and research-in-progress papers aligned with the conference theme of “Digital Futures for a Sustainable Society”. We invite scholarly contributions that explore the intersections of information systems and sustainability aiming to provide impactful insights that can guide us towards a more balanced future. These could include but not limited to applications of digital technologies in promoting sustainability across various domains from environmentally sustainable work practices to IS-enabled organisational changes that are required in sustainability transformations.

In addition to the focus on above directions, and their interplay, the General Track welcomes those paper that do not fit within any of the specific ACIS tracks, however well-suited for information systems discipline. The goal is to draw original and unique papers while also granting authors more degree of freedom in terms of their epistemological, ontological, and methodological approaches. Further, this track provides an opportunity for the chairs of other tracks, and their students, to submit to ACIS, should their paper topics fall within the scope of their own tracks.

Track Co-Chairs

• Michael Sheng, Macquarie University
• Kasuni Weerasinghe, Auckland University of Technology
• Adnan Mahmood, Macquarie University
• Mahdi Fahmideh, University of Southern Queensland 

Description

To navigate towards our digital future in the age of accelerations, particularly in the context of Web3 and metaverse, we must understand the roles played by emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), mixed reality, blockchain, cryptocurrency and NFT. They are independently disrupting, reshaping, and transforming the evolving nature of our home, work, business, and society. This track explores the many factors that influence the design, development, adoption, use, and impact of emerging technology applications and adoptions. It also looks at the convergence of emerging technologies and how they potentially could address some of the greatest challenges we face in the 21st century.

We welcome theoretical, design science, case studies and field studies papers that enrich our understanding of some of the emerging technologies both individually and collectively. 

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• The role of emerging technologies in a sustainable world, a circular economy or a post-COVID era
• The application and adoption of emerging technologies to digitally transform home, work, business, industry, government, and society
• The application and adoption of emerging technologies in creating new domains
• Case study and best practice on designing, developing, adopting, using, and evaluating emerging technologies
• Decision support models and tools for application and adoption of emerging technologies
• Innovative design, commercialisation and application of a convergence of emerging technologies
• The impact of emerging technologies to different communities
• Research contributions discussing implementation success and failure stories

Track Co-Chairs

• Josh Morton, University of Leeds
• Ali Amrollahi, Macquarie University
• Sandeep Mysore Seshadrinath, University of New South Wales
• Ahmad Khanfar, Edith Cowan University

Description

In today’s digital age, information and communication technologies have rapidly permeated in all aspects of life. Organisations across the globe are actively undertaking various digital transformation initiatives to improve business process efficiency and effectiveness through automation, information sharing, and data-driven decision making. However, digital transformation typically introduces significant changes not only to organisational business processes, but also to organisational structure and people aspects. Without sound strategy, governance, and leadership, organisations may not achieve their strategic goals and expected outcomes from digital transformation initiatives.

This track provides novel insights on the role of information systems and information technology in the leadership of future organisations, particularly at the level of strategy and governance of firms that exceed regular activities at the operational level. The track focuses on a variety of systems and technologies used in organisational settings that can contribute to the achievement of strategic goals, and to navigating a pathway to the future aided by digital technologies. This includes – but is not limited to – financial and human resources, performance monitoring, and planning systems. Further, the track is interested in studies on corresponding support systems such as decision support systems and collaborative information systems and their role to support the strategic agenda within an organisation. This can include improved strategic decision-making through additional data sources and advanced information processing as well as improved dialogue and communication between systems and users. The track also encourages studies that explore the shortcomings of current technologies in this application area and studies how related challenges can be addressed. Last but not least, the track welcomes studies that examine digital technology deployments in addressing sustainability-related challenges. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• IT-enabled strategic leadership and strategic decision-making
• Information systems strategy, governance, process, development, and adoption
• Top management decision support through information systems
• Enterprise systems: implementation, adoption, and success
• Enterprise architecture role in digital transformation
• Governing information and technology resources to achieve competitive advantage
• The strategic impact of digital work and work mobility
• The strategic impact of disruptive and emerging technologies and IT innovation
• The strategic impact of data-driven and IT-enabled leadership and control approaches
• IT value creation and business alignment
• The impact of emerging technologies on strategic decision-making
• Challenges in big data and data analytics for strategic decision-making
• Innovations in IT governance and their effect on long-term planning
• Digital Sustainability, and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)

Track Co-Chairs

• Dilek Cetindamar, University of Technology Sydney
• Sophia Duan, La Trobe University
• Michael Lane, University of Southern Queensland
• Axel Korthaus, Swinburne University of Technology
• Sachithra Lokuge, University of Southern Queensland

Description

The rapid evolution and pervasive adoption of digital technologies and infrastructures has fundamentally changed the nature of products, processes, and services. Advances in digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, virtual reality, and internet-of-things are bringing dramatic changes in society, economy, and organisations. Digital innovation and transformation cut across traditional industry sector boundaries and involve inherently networked architectures, products, and services. The ongoing digitisation of products and services is also leading to radically new disruptive and dynamic business models. Further, these accelerated digital transformation is introducing both many opportunities but also considerable challenges and risks at the organizational and individual levels. In particular, rapid workforce automation, digitalisation of organisational processes, increased surveillance, and artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision making become key concerns for society as a whole and a focus of information systems scholars.

Looking at the intersection of information systems and innovation, this track will contribute to knowledge on how digital technology transforms not only the way that value is created with new products, services, organisational, and social innovation but also the future design and practices. This track will also consider on how digitisation influences the invention process itself, and how the innovation process becomes digitised. The focus of the track is on new approaches of digital innovation, business model transformation journey in shaping, and navigating the digital future at workplaces and society as a whole.

We welcome high quality research papers in any major topic of digital innovations, business models, and future of work with no limitation of the research methodologies. In sum, we seek no less than new ways to transform our understanding of this research area. 

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Digital innovation and transformation in business, government, and IS/IT education
• Innovation theory, models, and practices relevant to information systems
• Innovative digital business models and digital entrepreneurship
• Social innovation and ICT
• Innovation as a process of exploring, generating, and excluding of futures
• Digitisation and the future of work, workplaces, and occupations
• Implications of novel technologies (e.g., AI) for the future of work, organisations and industries
• Challenges of future of work
• Digital strategy and performance measurement

Track Co-Chairs

• Duy Dang, RMIT University Vietnam
• Nik Thompson, Curtin University
• Farkhondeh Hassandoust, University of Auckland

Description

Organisations and society in general are faced by challenges around digital technology innovation, and the rapid, large scale change that it brings. While some organisations have achieved unprecedented levels of productivity and profit as a result of embracing digital transformation, many have not. Emerging cyber threats arising from the new competitive environment are the theft of intellectual property and disruption of business continuity. Risks to organisations are exacerbated by the unprecedented scale at which competitive information and knowledge is being collected and analysed by organisations and the increased vulnerabilities from the rapid integration of new and complex technologies into the digital environment such as the internet of things (IoT), and bring your own devices (BYOD).

Despite the importance of security and privacy, much prior work has focused on technical issues and solutions. Behavioural and organisational level research are in a nascent state. This is particularly compelling to address given the onslaught of security and privacy problems that occur with the current poor state of information security governance, and lack of understanding the fundamental human psychology of deviance, as well as weak international laws and regulations. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the social and organisational implications of ubiquitous technology are not always positive. This “dark side” of Information Systems can undermine individual wellbeing through technology related stresses, addiction and technology misuse.

The Information Security Management and Privacy track focuses on how organisations and society can protect themselves considering the disruption caused by digital technology. 

The track welcomes submissions of the following topics but are not limited to:

• Adoption and use of information security technologies and practices
• Employee insecure behaviours, including insider threats, computer abuse, and shadow security
• Corporate strategies, governance, and management of compliance
• Cross-cultural issues in security and privacy
• Risk analysis, management, and assessment
• Security and privacy concerning social media and other non-work contexts
• Ethics and regulations for security and privacy
• Mitigation and prevention strategies for malware, intrusion detection, forensics and security for mobile devices
• Security and privacy concerning the use of artificial intelligence

Track Co-Chairs

• Aneesh Krishna, Curtin University
• Madushi Bandara, University of Sydney
• Yunfei Shi, University of New South Wales

Description

The goal of the Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Strategic Decision-making track is to advance our knowledge of the complexity of the disruptive technologies of data analytics and AI for better strategic decision-making. Aligned with the conference theme, the emphasis of the track is on how individual and organisational knowledge can be distilled from and incorporated into data analytics for making more effective decisions in building “ digital futures for a sustainable society”. We encourage submissions that offer significant theoretical and practical contributions on how organisations can utilise emerging analytics technologies and AI to create new knowledge and value effectively and efficiently for both organisational and social good.

We are particularly interested in incorporating of AI into strategic decisions and policies, as well as the use of analytic tools and techniques to automate and/or augment people’s knowledge and skills in various domains of Information Systems.

This track invites paper submissions that address the challenges and opportunities associated with Data Analytics and AI, and their implication into business processes and decision-making practices at the individual,organisational, and societallevels.
This track accepts both theoretical and empirical manuscripts in the areas of interest. This track is open to papers employing various research methods; and accepts completed research papers, as well as research-in-progress papers. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Data analytics across the various spectrums of academia and industry
• The integration of data analytics and AI for strategic decision-making leading to economic propensity and sustainable future
• Design, development, and use of AI to support innovative data-driven decisions and strategies
• Human factor considerations in developing various IS systems including methodological treatment
• Analytical tools and techniques, such as text analytics and sentiment analysis
• Visualisation of structured and unstructured data and knowledge
• Big data velocity and real-time analysis of data in decision-making at the individual,organisational, and societal levels
• Ethical and humanistic outcomes and implications of data analytics and AI

Track Co-Chairs

• Lemai Nguyen, Deakin University
• Eila Erfani, University of New South Wales
• Saeed Akhlaghpour, University of Queensland
• Samaneh Madanian, Auckland University of Technology
• Frada Burstein, Monash University

Description

The healthcare industry is undergoing rapid evolution, fuelled by the increasing pace of digital transformation and innovation. Both health practitioners and consumers are embracing digital technologies, using them to provide cutting-edge, integrated, and seamless wellness and health services, including everything from individual patient care to community and public health. Digital Health researchers explore a diverse range of topics for digital health transformative initiatives. From embedding AI and Large Language Models (LLM) for cutting-edge clinical support systems to innovative point-of-care technologies, and from empowering self-care interventions to the integration of digital assistants. 

The availability of mobile, wearable, IoT devices, digital twin, artificial intelligence (AI) and Generative AI solutions has enabled ubiquitous information tracking, analytics, decision making, and exchange. Use of these and other digital technologies in public health, telehealth, preventive health, patient self-care and self-management, and home-based health care is growing rapidly. Patients are now able to take a more active role in their health and wellness using wearable devices, mobile health apps, and remote monitoring tools.

Despite their many advantages, digital technologies present numerous challenges, for example various emerging ethics issues and usage of AI in healthcare. Challenges also include data security and privacy issues; the need to provide accurate, timely, adequate, and complete information to gain an effective transformation in healthcare; and the ethical, social and cultural sensitivities associated with transforming clinical and non-clinical practices.

We welcome submissions from academics, practitioners, students, developers and industry/government partners describing research in progress, completed research results, and technical reports on the current trends and challenges in digital health. We aim to contribute to creating a safe and connected healthcare system through digital transformation and innovation.

The following topics are of particular interest (but others will be considered):

• Applications of AI, generative AI and LLM and machine learning in healthcare
• Digital health literacy for healthcare consumers and health workers
• Participatory health information systems, human aspects, and inclusiveness in digital health
• Ethical, legal, and social issues in digital health research and practice
• Patient-centred smart health systems and patient empowerment
• Digital technologies in global and local epidemic responses and healthcare resilience
• Big data and analytics for smart health, process automation, and cognitive automation in healthcare
• The role of wearable, IoT, GPRS, cloud, and digital twin technologies in healthcare
• Real-world case studies of healthcare systems applications
• Systematic literature reviews of digital health research
• Advancing information systems (IS) theory in health informatics and health IS
• Digital health contributions to achieving sustainable development goals
• Digital health maturity and AI implementations
• Specific areas of digital health for example, telehealth, telemental health

Track Co-Chairs

• Blooma John, University of Canberra
• Ana Hol, Western Sydney University
• David Green, North Central College
• Jun Shen, University of Wollongong  

Description

Educators and education systems around the world are re-evaluating the knowledge and skills students need to succeed and lead in a rapidly changing and complex world. Looking forward the greatest challenge facing humanity can be summed up as adapting and sizing ourselves to fit within the capacity of one planet. Whilst the devastating health and economic impacts of COVID-19 pandemic continue to be far reaching globally, this has also accelerated the pace of change in the workplace including the higher education sector. To add-on, generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT are changing the way students are taught, assessed and how they study. Increasingly, our role as educators, centres around the ability to deliver transformational learning that provide graduates with the capabilities and skills needed to adapt, thrive, and lead in a dynamic and sustainable world. According to the Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 4: Quality Education, aims to ensure that inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities will be available to all. Such quality education also involves, ensuring that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development.

To instigate change and innovation, IS educators must continue to embrace the many challenges in order not only to prepare the graduates for the new work opportunities of digital economy, but also to produce graduates that are knowledgeable, agile, and innovative contributors to the economy and more broadly a sustainable society. IS education needs to embrace today’s complexity by constantly re-evaluating its curriculum and the impact of the latest technologies (e.g., personalised learning, smart education) to improve the student experience, social equity, and the future of international student mobility.

This track aims to explore new educational models, content, and innovative ways of utilising technology to stimulate the development of essential skills sought-after in the 21st century so that our IS graduates are job ready and highly employable. This track also aims to explore best practices to equip educators with adaptive and sustainable strategies for curriculum design and pedagogy across a wide variety of delivery modes – face-to-face, online, blended or hybrid.

This track welcomes high quality submissions employing diverse research methods ranging from papers aimed at improving curriculum, to papers addressing broader economic and societal topics in IS education, as well as best practice teaching cases. 

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Innovative, emergent curriculum principles, pedagogy, design, planning, implementation, practices, and evaluation including augmented and virtual reality and blockchain in the era of Web 3
• Novel digital learning applications (learning analytics, artificial intelligence technologies, intelligent tutoring systems, conversational agents, gamification, visualisation, interactive technologies etc.) for smart education (teaching and learning).
• Micro-credentialing, lifelong learning meeting ever-changing industry and societal needs
• Mobile education, digital educational practices (online, hybrid).
• Multi and inter-disciplinary approaches to IS education in the new cyber space.
• Sustainability, social, cultural (including indigenous perspectives), gender equality, and global pedagogical opportunities and challenges for IS education.
• Innovation and entrepreneurship in IS education.
• Emergent approaches for sustainable and adaptive IS education.
• Creative, experiential, transformational, active, hybrid IS learning
• IS education responding to rapidly changing environments.
• Case studies, business simulation (digital twins) methodologies and tools design, implementation, and evaluation.

Track Co-Chairs

• Libo Liu, University of Melbourne
• Dongming Xu, University of Queensland
• Shah Miah, University of Newcastle

Track Description

Digital Technologies facilitate greater participation in the exchange of information, enabling smart collaboration in various forms such as crowd work, distributed teams, remote work, and the collaboration between AI-driven agents and human employees. Social media is a prominent type of digital applications that enable such collaboration by allowing information, ideas, and thoughts, to be shared (or socialised) through virtual networks and communities. These networks can be organisational, inter-organisational, or just part of societal life. For end users, using the social media is a primary way of establishing and maintaining social ties and a channel for receiving digital services. For businesses, social media (along with other digital collaboration platforms) serves to attract, retain, and co-create value with customers and is a rich source of information for predicting customer behaviour and market trends. However, there are concerns about the unintended consequences and dangers of these platforms and tools. For example, many have raised concerns over users’ digital wellbeing, consumer intelligence,  addiction to smartphones, cyberbullying, fraud, fake information, and breaches of privacy or any other forms of human and societal ethics. In line with the conference theme “Digital Futures for a Sustainable Society”, we invite submission of cutting-edge conceptual, methodological, and empirical research that enhances our theoretical insight into and a practical understanding of a wide range of current and future tools and platforms for digital collaboration. 

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Knowledge/information sharing, digital collaboration dynamics, and virtual teams
• Leveraging social capital and digital collaboration tools to maximize business potential
• New theories about the effects of digital collaboration at one or multiple levels, including individual, departmental, organizational, and inter-organisational levels
• The use of data science and analytics methods for research on the crowd and digital collaboration
• Digital collaboration and citizen science
• Consumer intelligence from online news or articles 
• New designs of platforms and processes for digital collaboration, including smart devices or apps that can be used to share (or socialise) information
• Trustworthiness and reliability of the information on digital collaboration tools
• Management challenges of digital collaboration
• Ethical concerns, privacy issues and challenges related to ownership of intellectual property
• Exploration of negative effects of social media and digital collaboration tools (e.g., cyberbullying, fraud, and fake news) and mitigation methods
• Understanding and combating the diffusion of fake news and misinformation
• Implications of regulating social media content (e.g., Australia’s News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code)

Track Co-Chairs

• Raffaele F Ciriello, The University of Sydney
• Marc Cheong, University of Melbourne
• Jade W Brooks, University of Auckland
• Ida A Someh, University of Queensland
• Emmanuelle Vaast, McGill University

Description

New digital technologies, such as social media, blockchain, or AI, play an ever-increasing role in all aspects of our lives, posing the question of how these digital innovations can contribute to the common good of societies. So far, the Information Systems (IS) discipline has not provided a satisfactory answer, as the vast majority of research published in top IS journals has focused predominantly on the economic interests of corporations, with scant attention to social and environmental considerations (Clarke and Davison, 2020). Still, as humankind struggles to keep up with pandemics, climate change, and rising geopolitical tension, we note a rising urge among many IS researchers to explore and explain how new digital technologies can help address these societal challenges while mitigating unintended negative impacts. As Sarker et al. (2019, p.705) put it, “by losing sight of humanistic goals, the IS discipline risks facilitating the creation of a dehumanized and dystopian society”.

Against this backdrop, we encourage any kind of submission that takes a balanced perspective on how new digital technologies can contribute to the common good. We will constructively evaluate all submissions regardless of their theoretical, epistemological, ontological, methodological, geographical, or paradigmatic approach. We welcome qualitative, quantitative, behaviour-oriented, design-oriented, positivist, anti-positivist, theoretical, and empirical studies. In short, we do not privilege any particular ‘camp’ of research.
Nonetheless, critical thinking and a focus on ‘the common good’ will be the two hallmarks of a successful submission. Regarding critical thinking, submissions are unlikely to fare well in this track if they take an overly enthusiastic, optimistic, or utopian view on new digital technology, without reflecting critically on the present and future impacts of it. But a submission is also unlikely to fare well if it prophesises a doomsday scenario without sufficient substantiation by compelling evidence or logically sound argumentation. A successful submission will fall somewhere in between these utopian and dystopian extremes while carefully weighing both possibilities.

As for the focus on the common good, a successful submission will consider how digital innovations can create value for all stakeholders. This requires careful analysis of how various stakeholders, both core and marginalised, can derive value from new digital technologies, ideally without overexploiting or harming others. It also requires attentiveness to different sets of values, ethics, and moral principles as well as their cultural relativity – what is seen as ‘beneficial for the common good’ in one culture might be considered the opposite in another.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• How to create beneficial impacts for everyone, rather than a few, with new digital technologies and business models. 
• How digital innovations can contribute to greater equity, diversity, or inclusion in business and society.
• How can digital innovations help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• How to better align IS research and education with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• How the IS community can shift from its predominant focus on corporations and economic interests to also include the public and non-profit sectors, focusing more on social and environmental impacts. 
• How to incentivize/nudge pro-social behaviour with digital technologies. 
• Digital responsibility: How to nurture ‘responsible’ use of digital technologies?
• Digitally-enabled organisational resilience and sustainability: How to appropriately balance social, economic, and environmental interests in digitalisation?
• Digital harms and ‘dark sides’ of IS: How to conceptualize, measure, manage, and mitigate detrimental impacts of digital technologies?
• How do social actors respond to large scale harm and injustices arising from digital technologies? And how can these responses be coordinated to repair harm and restore justice?
• Reconfiguring the ‘common good’: What does ‘doing good for everyone’ mean in the digital age?

References 

Clarke, R., & Davison, R. M. (2020). Research perspectives: Through whose eyes? The critical concept of researcher perspective. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 21(2), 1. 
Sarker, S., Chatterjee, S., Xiao, X., & Elbanna, A. (2019). The sociotechnical axis of cohesion for the IS discipline: Its historical legacy and its continued relevance. MIS Quarterly, 43(3), 695-720. 

Track Co-Chairs

• Lubna Alam,  Deakin University
• Hamed Sarbazhosseni, University of Canberra   
• Jayan Kurian, University of Technology Sydney 
• Asif Gill, University of Technology Sydney 

Description

Advances in digital technologies create both challenges and opportunities for government decision makers to tackle AI, Cybersecurity, Data, Digital Transformation, Organisational Resilience, and Innovation. With the exponential growth in the amount of data available to government and constituents, there is a need to create a culture of innovation, data, and technology while sustaining effective and efficient use of government resources. Two major developments are making significant contributions to government: first, the increase in the number of case studies from across government agencies to inform and inspire the future of service provisions accelerated through rapid digitalization during Covid19 pandemic, and second, having the potential to disrupt traditional processes, procedures, and practices of government through greater efficiencies using emerging technologies and methodologies and meet austerity demands. Considering the recent crisis with data breaches (i.e., Medicare) and pitfalls with automated decision-making (i.e., Robodebt), it is imperative to inspect both the benefits and risks of using data and digital technologies for sustainable and responsible digital government.

This track seeks quality submissions using appropriate research methodologies on current and emerging aspects of AI, Cybersecurity, Data, Digital Transformation, Organisational Resilience, and Innovation in the context of government. 

Possible topics of interested but not limited to the following:

• AI ethics and policy 
• AI implementation, management and sustainability in Government
• Cybersecurity, surveillance and privacy in Government
• Data architecture and governance
• Digital government strategy, policy, implementation, management and best practices
• Digital Government and Business Process Management (BPM)
• Disaster Information, Resilience, for Emergency and Crisis Technologies (DIRECT)
• Diversity & Inclusion and digital inequalities and alignment with United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)
• Emerging technologies and topics in digital government
• Smart and Connected Cities and Communities
• Business models and innovation (incl. digital twins) for transitioning of smart to circular cities
• Data-driven government, datafication and platformization
• Emerging issues for digital government in developing contexts
• Organisational resilience and sustainability
• Trusted data and digital foundation
• Communication of sustainability practices in the Government sector

Track Co-Chairs

• Dr Shastri L Nimmagadda, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
• Dr Neel Mani, DSVV, Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India.
• Dr Seema Purohit, Professor Emeritus, Birla College, Mumbai, India.
• Dr Neelam Naik, UPGCM, Mumbai, India.
• Dr Lincoln C. Wood, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Description

A digital ecosystem is a community technology with groups of interconnected domains and systems driven by Big Data sources. Community technology can be a composite ecological entity with interrelated multidimensional attributes, interpreted between human and environmental ecosystems. Integrating volumes and varieties of Big Data in multiple domains is challenging in digital ecosystem management and practice. The challenge has multiplied with data heterogeneity, multidimensionality, and complexity in ecological assessments. A sustainable integrated methodological framework, such as Design Science guided Information System architecture, can address the challenges of uncovering the connectivity between diverse systems. Strong interactions may coexist between the ecosystems through their elements and processes with sharp inherent boundaries, exhibiting discontinuities and overlaps because of the juxtaposition of multiple system fringes in various scales and spatial dimensions (with nested hierarchies). Multi-scalable ecosystems (including spatial ecologies) can manifest the sustainment and benefit the coexistence based on a commonality between structural units and domains in Digital Ecosystems and Technology (DEST) contexts.

Researchers in the current track can articulate Big Data-guided information systems and related artefacts for unifying the digital ecosystems and analyzing them within a sustainability framework, demonstrating the ecosystems’ connectivity through an application development procedure in industry scenarios. The new knowledge of ecosystem connectivity can contribute to sustainable business alliances and make them more ecologically functional. The integration across multiple domains can significantly minimize the risk of ambiguity in the single method of interpreting new knowledge obtained from diverse ecosystems. Accordingly, the research objectives may be designed to analyze issues, signifying and framing the goals of the DEST research. The authors can articulate an integrated framework to develop and generate new artefacts, interfaces, and agents, enabling easy access to ecosystem information and extracting and analyzing data views to create cognitive knowledge from fine-grained metadata. Robust methodologies can facilitate new insights into the policies for ameliorating sustainability issues. Examining benchmarks and analyzing the impacts of procedures can motivate understanding of multidimensional sustainability-informed management at micro, meso, and macro levels globally. The researchers can resolve the ecosystem complexities through community-based IS/IT applications, qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing big data-guided diverse digital ecosystems.

We are particularly interested in the fusion of multiple ecologies, such as human, ecological health, and environmental ecosystems, and how these articulated models are made with usable analytic tools when numerous domains and systems emerge within ecologies. The track invites paper submissions addressing the challenges and opportunities associated with data modelling, analytics, and implementable multiple digital ecosystems, decision-support logistics, and supply chain ecosystems. The track accepts theoretical and practical IS research insights in ecosystem development. The track is open to papers employing various research methods and accepts completed and research-in-progress forms. Areas of research interest include, but are not limited to:

• Design of IS constructs and models in ecosystem contexts;
• Big data integration and analysis in ecosystem contexts;
• Development of IS artefacts in human ecosystems, their amalgamation with ecological health, environmental and economic ecosystems through attribute modelling;
• Design of data schemas and best practices in ecosystem contexts;
• Development of robust modelling methodologies in ecosystem contexts;
• Multidimensional ecosystem contexts and their data analytics;
• Design and development that support the implementation of IS artefacts in ecosystem contexts;
• Data science tools and techniques to manage ecosystems;
• Articulating visualization tools for ecosystem new knowledge interpretation and managing ecosystem services;
• Digital ecosystems and technologies for decision support systems;
• Implication of IS frameworks and methodological treatment in the ecosystem applications;
• Ecosystem services that are affected by evolving human and environmental (including pre- and post-COVID) ecosystems.

Track Co-Chairs

• Ahmed Iman, University of Canberra
• Olivera  Marjonovic, Macquarie University
• Carmen Leong, University of New South Wales
• Stan Karanasios, University of Queensland

Description

Despite numerous efforts over the past twenty years, digital inequalities persist and are even widening. This trend is evident across various levels and contexts, including within affluent societies, where there remains a lack of focus and adequate policy interventions.

Digital inequality (DI) has evolved from the traditional concept of the digital divide (Dewan & Riggins, 2005; Rogers, 2001; Scheerder et al., 2017), which focused on access, affordability, and skill, to a more holistic concept encompassing a number of dimensions. It is defined as “a unique status quo where groups differing in characteristics such as socioeconomic background, age, and gender are disadvantaged in terms of access, knowledge, competency, and costs with respect to digital resources” (Imran, 2022, p.2). 

The impact of digital inequality is often inseparable from growing societal inequality (Vassilakopoulou & Hustad, 2021), wherein the vast majority of the planet’s population is missing out on the surge in advanced digital incorporation (Heeks, 2022). Thus, Digital inequality has significant repercussions for the growing divide and social change in several areas, including education, opportunities, empowerment, self-dignity, and well-being.

Drawing on insights into the multifaceted, evolving, and far-reaching implications of digital inequality in the current era of digital transformation (Imran, 2022), the discourse requires much more attention from researchers. Addressing the contextual complexities surrounding digital inequality is crucial for bridging the gap.

The track aims to bring together IS researchers interested in researching and addressing digital inequality to discuss critical issues surrounding DI in all its facets while promoting inclusiveness, for example, in digital services. Through focused research, we aim to contribute to the discourse on digital inequality. The track invites the integration of diverse perspectives, theories, and methodologies to enrich research and understanding of the complex issues surrounding digital inequality.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Digital inequality – reviews, theories and concepts 
• Exemplar case study on digital inequality
• Innovation and approach to address digital inequality and promoting digital inclusion.
• Impacts and challenges of digital inequality from social, economic or cultural perspectives
• Social transformation due to digital inequality 
• Algorithmic injustice, human rights and ethical issues in balancing access and equity of technology 
• Algorithmic design and roles in perpetuating or mitigating digital inequalities.
• Digital polarisation 
• Digital rights, identity and empowerment
• Inequality in emerging technologies such as visual recognition

Researchers from other disciplines are also welcome to contribute and engage with the IS discourse in addressing the issue.  

References

Dewan, S., & Riggins, F. J. (2005). The Digital Divide: Current and Future Research Directions. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 6(12), 1
Heeks, R.  (2022).  Digital inequality beyond the digital divide: conceptualizing adverse digital incorporation in the global South, Information Technology for Development, 28:4, 688-704
Imran, A. (2022). Why addressing digital inequality should be a priority. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 89(3), 1-12.
Rogers, E. M. (2001). The digital divide. Convergence, 7, 96–111. 
Scheerder, A., Van Deursen, A., & Van Dijk, J. (2017). Determinants of internet skills, uses and outcomes. A systematic review of the second-and third-level digital divide. Telematics and informatics, 34, 1607–1624. 
Vassilakopoulou, P., & Hustad, E. (2021). Bridging digital divides: A literature review and research agenda for information systems research. Information Systems Frontiers., 1-15, 1–15.

Track Co-Chairs

• Dhirendra Mani Shukla, Indian Institute of Management
• Ruonan Sun, Monash University
• Israr Qureshi, Australian National University
• Caroline Khene,  Institute of Development Studies
• Pitso Tsibolane, University of Cape Town

Description

Marginalised contexts exist in both developing and developed countries and are manifested in various forms including, economic marginalisation, extreme poverty, social exclusions based on caste, race, and gender, marginalised communities (e.g., indigenous population, migrants, refugees, LGBTQ, and underrepresented minorities) (Bhatt et al., 2024; Qureshi et al., 2022, 2023). The resource-constraint environment along with the constraining social norms, create hurdles in addressing marginalisation. In an era defined by rapid technological advancement and interconnectedness, the role of digital technologies in fostering development within marginalised contexts has never been more pivotal. An emerging stream of research highlights the crucial role of digital technologies in enabling marginalised communities by employing effective knowledge management processes that involve knowledge commoning and scaffolding (Qureshi et al., 2022), resourcing (Sutter et al., 2023), bridging complementary institutional voids (Parthiban et al., 2020), and technoficing (Qureshi et al., 2021).

While social intermediaries are engaged in addressing marginalisation, the marginalised communities, at times, feel excluded from the process, express lack of cultural recognition, and prefer bottom up digital development initiatives. If implemented properly, digital technologies hold promise for participatory development and bolstering bottom-up approaches (Gandhi et al., 2007). Additionally, it can play a crucial role in promoting social entrepreneurship and digital social innovation, addressing challenges in marginalised contexts (Qureshi et al., 2021). It is crucial to explore innovative approaches prioritising inclusivity, sustainability, indigenous wisdom, and the empowerment of marginalised communities in navigating the complexities of the digital initiatives. However, discussions surrounding the development, implementation, and utilisation of digital technologies in marginalised communities remain inadequate, especially considering the lack of full appreciation and utilisation of indigenous knowledge, local ways of living, and local resources and skills. Merely acknowledging the characteristics of marginalised communities without actively engaging them in the development of solutions falls short of addressing their unique needs and challenges.

The purpose of this track is to encourage robust discussions that challenge current paradigms by moving beyond mere acknowledgment of the characteristics of marginalised contexts. Instead, it aims to facilitate meaningful engagement with these communities to co-create solutions that are contextually relevant and sustainable. By amplifying marginalised voices and incorporating indigenous wisdom, this track seeks to pave the way for more inclusive and empowering digital interventions that truly benefit those at the grassroots level. Join us in this vital conversation as we strive to understand and leverage the full potential of digital technologies in enabling empowerment in marginalised contexts.

Topics of interest include (but are not restricted to):

• Innovative use of digital technologies for development in marginalised contexts
• Effective solutions for digital divide
• Emerging concepts for digital development in resource-constrained environments
• Digital initiatives engaging local culture and lifestyles
• Digital technologies and constructive work in marginalised communities
• Effective knowledge management in marginalised communities
• Maximise the value of ‘good enough’ digital technologies
• Addressing intersectionality during digital development projects
• Emerging community-led social innovation models that leverage digital technologies
• Digital development for social good
• Leveraging technoficing and scaffolding approaches to create social impact in the marginalised contexts
• Digital technologies to mitigate extreme exclusion
• Role of digital technologies in enabling indigenous/social entrepreneurship
• Digital technologies and entrepreneurship by and/or for marginalised communities

Track Co-Chairs

• Hameed Chughtai, Lancaster University
• Angsana Techatassanasoontorn, Auckland University of Technology
• Nelly Todorova, University of Canterbury 
• Rosetta Romano, University of Canberra

Description

The Information Systems (IS) discipline has been instrumental in navigating the rapid technological changes in our society. However, the field has been largely dominated by Western-centric perspectives, leading to a prevalence of colonial power dynamics in technology access and usage. We invite scholars to challenge the colonial power dynamics prevalent in technology design, development, access and usage. This shift is crucial as it allows us to explore the experiences of marginalized communities with digital technology, often mirroring their experiences during colonization.

This track invites scholars to explore what it means to decolonize information systems, challenge existing colonial legacies in our digital society, and envision decolonial futures. We are particularly interested in research that showcases decolonial perspectives and demonstrates how these approaches can foster a more inclusive society. Key questions we aim to address include: How can we decolonize information systems research? How can we challenge and transform the existing colonial legacies in our digital society? And, how can we envision and shape a decolonial future in a digital world?

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Decolonial approaches to design and development
• Decolonial approaches to ICT4D
• Data colonialism and new forms of coloniality
• Decoloniality, critical race issues and technology
• Decolonization, Data justice and digital activism
• Decolonizing gender and sex through technology
• Application of Indigenous methods and theories (e.g., Kaupapa Māori)
• Application of Indigenous philosophies (e.g., Ubuntu)
• Decolonial ethics

Both junior and senior scholars are encouraged to participate.

Track Co-Chairs

• Carlos C N Kuhn, University of Canberra
• George.Hlaing, University of Canberra
• Mahdi Fahmideh, University of Southern Queensland
• Richa Awasthy, University of Canberra
• Silviana Tana, Australian National University

Description

As society rapidly transitions into a digitally-driven era, the pervasive influence of open-source technologies becomes increasingly evident. Embracing the ethos of collaboration and transparency, open-source solutions have become pivotal in reshaping the digital landscape. The track “”The Role of Open Source in the Digital Future”” delves into the transformative potential of open-source technologies, particularly in the realms of cybersecurity, emerging technologies, and data management.
This track explores how open-source initiatives are revolutionizing cybersecurity practices, fortifying digital infrastructures against evolving threats, and fostering resilient defense mechanisms. Additionally, it investigates the strategic implications of open-source adoption in harnessing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and blockchain.
Furthermore, the track delves into the implication of open-source tech in data management and securing scalability of data. It examines how open-source solutions enable efficient data management strategies, facilitate data integration across disparate systems, and empower organizations to harness the full potential of their data assets while ensuring security and scalability.
Through insightful research and exploration, this track aims to illuminate the pivotal role of open-source technologies in shaping the digital future and addressing emerging challenges in cybersecurity, technology innovation, and data management.
Last but not least, the track welcomes studies that utilise open-source technology deployments. 

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Integration of open-source frameworks in cybersecurity frameworks
• The role of open-source in securing IoT devices
• Leveraging open-source tools for threat intelligence and incident response
• Exploring the strategic impact of open-source initiatives in driving innovation and sustainability in the digital realm
• Implications of open-source tech in data management and securing scalability of data