Track 1: Transforming Society with ISD

Information Systems (IS) are contributing to transformative changes in business and everyday life of people. This is an era of digital Darwinism whereby digital technologies enable new types of innovation processes, and offer unprecedented opportunities for adding, recombining and integrating resources in services and products. Taken together, the exponential increases in technological capacity has been argued to distribute control and locus of innovation. These developments in Information Systems Development (ISD) can potentially increase citizen participation in democratic processes, standards of living, and transparency. Simultaneously, digitalization, poses new challenges. For example, social-media might lead to “filter bubbles” reinforcing our established beliefs, fusion of everyday practices with IS create privacy concerns, the “internet-of-things” escalates security related risks and artificial intelligence poses salient ethical considerations. While new technological capabilities in IS are an important enabler of societal progress, technology alone does not create economic growth and social progress. Relationships are critical to beneficial interactions between technology, its users and the wider society. Without people, none of the progress and social gains IS enables would be possible. Issues like the impact of IS on quality of people's lives, employment, education, networking, communications, business and public organizations are main areas of contribution of this track, as well as the risks and ethical considerations it creates.