The EGOV-CeDEM-ePart 2025 conference, for short EGOV 2025, was organized by the IFIP WG 8.5 Information Systems in Public Administration. The conference is dedicated to digital or electronic government, open government, local government (smart cities), smart governance, artificial intelligence (AI), e-democracy, policy informatics, and electronic participation. With a long tradition along its various branches, the EGOV-CeDEM-ePart conference has gained its reputation of being the key and leading conference worldwide in the research domains of digital/electronic, open, and smart government, as well as electronic participation. [...]

Traditionally public decision-makers have been given discretion in many of the decisions they have to make in how to comply with legislation and policies. In this way, the context and specific circumstances can be taken into account when making decisions. This enables more acceptable solutions, but at the same time, discretion might result in treating individuals differently. With the advance of AI-based decisions, the role of the decision-makers is changing. The automation might result in fully automated decisions, humans-in-the-loop or AI might only be used as recommender systems in which humans have the discretion to deviate from the suggested decision. The predictability of and the accountability of the decisions might vary in these circumstances, although humans always remain accountable. Hence, there is a need for human-control and the decision-makers should be given sufficient authority to control the system and deal with undesired outcomes. In this direction this paper analyzes the degree of discretion and human control needed in AI-driven decision-making in government. Our analysis is based on the legal requirements set/posed to the administration, by the extensive legal frameworks that have been created for its operation, concerning the rule of law, the fairness-non-discrimination, the justifiability and accountability, and the certainty/predictability.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is increasingly used by firms for sourcing business application software. SaaS can enable a cost reduction and quality improvement of existing operations and provide rapid and low-cost innovation. However, decision makers are unclear about how they can benefit from SaaS. This study contributes to filling this knowledge gap by investigating factors that determine the magnitudes of operational and innovational benefits and firm performance. These research hypotheses were tested using data collected through a survey of 102 Dutch firms that use sophisticated financial SaaS services. The results show that a firm's adaptation to the SaaS model as well as its ACAP positively affects operational and innovation benefits, whereas contractual governance positively affects only the innovational benefits, and relational governance does not affect any of these two types of benefits. Although both operational and innovational benefits positively impact a firm's performance, the former have a stronger impact than the latter. The insights gained from our survey can support firms' decision-making concerning the maximization of the business benefits and firm performance.

Cloud Computing (CC) offers a new mode for companies to gain access to information and communication technologies (ICT) services, which can offer important benefits. However, limited research has been conducted about how firms will be able to accomplish the benefits of CC in order to improve their firm performance. This paper contributes to filling these research gaps by investigating empirically: 1) the effects of firm’s adaptation and absorptive capacity (ACAP) on the benefits gained from CC; and 2) the impact of these CC benefits on firm performance. Data for our study have been collected through a questionnaire from 102 Dutch firms using SaaS services, which have been used for the estimation of a structural equation model (SEM). The findings show that CC adaptation has a very strong positive effect, ACAP has a medium to strong effect on benefits gained from CC, which have a strong positive effect on firm performance.