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Over the past decades a number of new perspectives on public administration have emerged, for instance New Public Service, New Public Governance, and Digital Era Governance. Several of these perspectives seem to have the concept of co-production in common, implying that the public sector engages citizens to take part in the design and execution of services. A rather new way to achieve co-production in the public sector has been to utilize crowdsourcing or social media monitoring. However, the way these “methods” have been implemented in public sector is often associated with difficulties, and to overcome some of them we propose an Internet of Things (IoT) approach that hopefully will create improved conditions for data-driven business development. At present, the approach is tested in a local government in northern Sweden in which we have set up a Low Power Wide Area Network designed for wireless battery-operated sensors. Although the test is still in an initial stage, results so far are promising and using sensor data in business development may be one way to improve public sector services. However, our test also shows that there are some issues that are of importance when designing and using IoT in public spaces. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of affordance can be useful to understand how we design and implement sensors in public spaces.

The past decades a number of new perspectives on public administration have emerged, for instance New Public Service, New Public Governance and Digital Era Governance. Several of these perspectives seem to have the concept of co-production in common, implying that the public sector engages citizens to take part in the design and execution of services. A rather new way to achieve co-production in the public sector has been to utilize crowdsourcing or social media monitoring. However, the way these 'methods' has been implemented in public sector is often associated with difficulties, and to overcome some of them we propose an Internet of Things (IoT) approach that hopefully will create improved conditions for data-driven business development, and innovative citizen sourcing. At present, the approach is tested in a local government in northern Sweden in which we have set up a Low Power Wide Area Network (LoRa) designed for wireless battery-operated sensors. Although the test is still in an initial stage, results so far are promising and combining IoT and social media may be one way of creating co-production of public sector services.

The objective of this paper is to present empirical findings suggesting that it may be easier to develop a citizen service than to create more effective administrative procedures. Our starting point is a case study in which we followed a large strategically important development project in a Swedish municipality. The project aims to improve both citizen service and the municipality's internal effectiveness. Its main objective is to develop a Citizen Service Unit (CSU) that works as a one-stop-shop collecting service requests from citizens in one channel. According to the citizens the CSU clearly is a success. In the citizen survey we conducted the service of the CSU is rated very high. The answering rate has increased to 85%, every request is recorded in a document and workflow system and the citizen receives fast feedback from a handling officer at the responsible office. From an organizational perspective the CSU is not at all a success. On the managerial level there is a consensus on why and how they should change within their offices. On lower levels, however, clear roles, new work routines and routines for the communication between the CSU and handling officers to a large extent have been missing. Therefore, we suggest the following lessons to be learned: (1) Pay equal attention to the front-office and the back-office perspective. Reengineered business processes and new work routines will not show up by themselves, and (2) When developing one-stop-shops as the CSU make sure to also develop models for the relationship between the one-stop-shop and the rest of the organization.

National, regional and local governments are currently positioning themselves to be part of the Internet revolution, and as technology improves, greater attention is being given to its use in developing the business of governments. However, this aspect does not seem to have been an object of interest for university education. Developments have been done on the operational level where net based learning platforms and environments have been introduced, but strategically universities still seem to be organised from a supply oriented perspective. Hence, few methods and tools are developed for student driven development of lifelong learning. This paper presents three models for improving universities ability to develop demand oriented lifelong learning for its students. The first model considers the idea of a one-stop shop at universities. Today potential students communicate with different units/actors; student service, study counsellors, teachers, directors of undergraduate studies, etc. Currently common information systems, which collects and records requests from students are lacking. This type of information system could be similar to a customer-relation management system and help the organisation to make strategic decisions based on real needs. The second approach considers efficient models for development and maintenance of courses delivered over multiple channels. The objective is to generate the necessary foundation for making decisions based on student needs that is of practical and financial value to the organisation. The third model aims at finding private-public partnerships that deliver different forms of educational solutions. These aspects are all of importance when developing a sustainable strategic development of universities.

This paper focus on the preconditions for life long learning in network learning environments.There is currently a large discrepancy between the design of technology enhanced learningsettings and actual use of technology, which can constrain the ability to deliver sustainable andefficient lifelong learning. Despite the flexibility within information and communication technologymost designed virtual environments are highly static in their function of supportingcommunication, coordination and collaboration. Further, many national ICT-initiatives in schoolsand universities have had little impact of educational practices.The paper investigates in methods for understanding aspects of interactions and practicesamong different actors in virtual learning settings. Concretely, the objective has been tounderstand what strategies/practices people use to manage collaboration in technologyenhanced learning settings. As a consequence it is of importance to study the affordances ofvarious information technologies and how different actors handle it. Affordances is hereregarded as pre-condition for virtual learning settings which give the designer an understandingof the space of opportunities technical artefacts has in a curtain environments. Technologyaffordance has its origin from Gibson (1986) but has been elaborated within a cognitivistapproach (Norman 1988) and activity theory approach (Berentsen and Trettvik 2002) The paperuses an ethnographical approach observing teachers and students interacting in networkedlearning environments. Specifically, the relationship between artefacts, users and environmenthas been observed by focusing on breakdowns in interaction and coordination. The resultsshow that current work practices/experiences and ways of interacting with technology influencethe space of opportunities in the learning setting.

Design of learning spaces has to correspond to users’ needs and goals, how current and future practices evolve in them and users’ appropriation of new technologies. Financial constraints, increased diversity among students, more and more students taking part-time and flexible learning options, etc. have created new challenges for the design of learning spaces in higher education. In this new context innovative technologies are also emerging and the ways people communicate, coordinate and collaborate are continuously transforming and changing, which affect learning space design.

Our empirical data consist of focus group interviews with students and directors of studies. Students preferred learning spaces that integrate formal learning activities with more informal and leisure activities. Directors favoured spaces that integrate their roles as teachers, researchers and administrators. Based on the results of the focus group interviews we designed three different learning spaces supporting classroom teaching as well as more informal learning, which allow students to perform both individual and group activities. The learning spaces described are not yet evaluated. We believe that the appropriation of a learning space is a complex process. Hence, when evaluating the use of learning spaces it is essential to understand users’ practices, their needs and goals and their use of learning resources.

As the app market expands, new challenges arise for developers. Creating useful applications is important in achieving extensive and cohesive use. This paper presents a mobile application called "The Time Machine", offering location-dependent information about the environment in a town. The app is evaluated through expert evaluation, as well as user evaluation conducted as a field observation with 15 participating users, measuring the level of usability in the application. Results are used to discuss guidelines on how to develop useful mobile applications. Knowledge about user behavior, a clear application purpose, an understandable interface, and cross-platform functionality are all important aspects for developers to consider.