Örebro University
Åke Grönlund
ake.gronlund@esi.oru.se
 
 
 
 

Åke Grönlund: CV, publications, and research interests

Personal data
Born October 24, 1954. Married, three children.
Address  Södra Majorsgatan 12 A, 903 36 Umeå, Sweden
Phone: +46 70 585 1790, Fax +46 90 786 6550
Email: ake.gronlund@esi.oru.se
 

Exam & affiliation

Åke Grönlund is (full) Professor of Informatics at Örebro University. He received his PhD in informatics from Umeå University, where he has worked since 1987. Currently affiliated to Örebro University and Umeå University.
 

Research focus

Electronic Government and E-democracy are the currently two most prominent research fields. Current publications in those fields include two international books, two special sections of leading academic journals, and three books in Swedish. More generally, interests include the coordination of organizations (including “virtual organizations” and networks) using information and communication technologies (ICT), including electronic service delivery, organizational redesign, electronic information infrastructures, and coordination of work based on ICT use. Current work includes not only public sector restructuring but also mobile technology for different contexts. Grönlund’s PhD thesis was entitled “Public Computer Systems”, discussed client-organizational use of IT before the World Wide Web was invented in the early 1990s, making him a pioneer in the field of electronic services (nominated so by other people).
 

Assignments

Founding faculty and member of the Steering Committee of the multidisciplinary (informatics, political science, media and communication studies, history) DemocrIT research programme on ICT in democratic processes.
 Director of CSIPS, Center for Studies of IT in the Public Sector.
Coordinator of the DemocrIT International Network of Excellence, involving all leading institutions and individuals across Europe.
Associate editor for the journal e-Services Quarterly.
Referee for several journals and conferences such as e-Services Quarterly, IEEE Software, Electronic Commerce and Electronic Markets, IRMA, AIS, DEXA EGOV, ICIS, ECIS, and ICEIS.
Chair of IFIP (International Federation for Information Systems) Working Group 8.5, Informatics in the Public Sector.
Several consultant assignments in European project within the area of electronic services and electronic government.
Member of ACM, AIS, and IRMA. Also proud member of IS World.
 

Research projects

(examples from the past 5 years)
Cultural conflicts in local e-democracy projects (2002-2003)
DemocrIT – a multidisciplinary research programme on Electronic Democracy (Coordinator, scientific leader).
Social processes at the mobile workplace (Swedish Transport & Communications Research Board), 1999-2003 (Project leader).
IT and the development of rural areas (with Dept of Social Geography) (Swedish Transport & Communications Research Board), completed 2000 (Project leader).
Networked Organizations (Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development). Completed 1997.
Evaluation of the first e-voting experiment in Sweden at Umeå Student Union 2001 (Ministry of Justice).
 

Consultancy/EU projects

Consultant (user requirement, evaluation setup, evaluation) and peer reviewer for EU 5th Framework programme IST projects AVANTI and CYBERVOTE.
Scientific coordinator of Infosond  (Information and Services on Demand) (EU 4th Framework Programme). Development and assessment of electronic services. Completed 1999.
Scientific consultant in OneStop Service (Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development). Completed 2000.
Scientific consultant and project leader for prototype development in SAMIT, IT support for Public Service (Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development). Completed 1995 (the first Swedish government project that considered Internet technology).
In preparation for Framework 6: Coordinator of the DemocrIT international network of excellence, and participant in the leading electronic government network organized by University of Linz.
Invited speaker in many practitioner contexts including Telecities, Major Cities of Europe, First eGov conference in Mexico 2001, E-government & e-policy in Korea 2002, Swedish Parliament.
 
 

Publications (sample 5 years)

Books and Chapters

Grönlund, Å  Electronic Government – Design, Applications, and Management. Idea Group Publishing, 2002.
Grönlund, Å E-democracy in practice - methods, infrastructures and discourse. Special issue of e-Service Journal (Fall 2002)
Grönlund, Å.  Private Sanctity Overriding Democratic Rigor. I R. Traunmüller & K. Lenk (red) Electronic Government, sid 52-60. Springer, 2002.
Grönlund, Å. Emerging Infrastructures for E-democracy - in Search of Strong Inscriptions. e-Service Journal (Fall 2002)
Grönlund, Å.  Emerging Electronic Infrastructures - Exploring Democratic Components. Social Science Computer Review. Vol 21, No 1/Spring 2003, pp 55-72.
Grönlund, Å (With Agneta Ranerup) Elektronisk förvaltning, elektronisk demokrati – visioner, verklighet, vidareutveckling. (Electronic administration, electronic democracy – visions, state-of-the-art, and further development) Studentlitteratur, 2001. In Swedish.
Grönlund, Å  IT, demokratin och medborgarnas deltagande. (IT, democracy, and citizen participation).Stockholm: Teldok, 2001. In Swedish.
Grönlund, Å Elektroniska omröstningar (Electronic Voting). In Christer Jönsson (red) Rösträtten 80 år, jubileumsbok för att uppmärksamma 80-årsjubiléet av den allmänna och lika rösträtten. Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. In Swedish
Grönlund, Å Democracy  in an IT-Framed Society. Special section of Communications of the ACM, January 2001
Grönlund, Å Managing Electronic  Services - A Public Sector Perspective. Springer London, Practitioners Series (2000)
Grönlund, Å. Building an infrastructure to manage electronic services. In Managing Internet and Intranet Tchnologies: Challenges and Opportunities. Subhashish Dasgupta (2000)
Grönlund, Å (With Olov Forsgren) Portalbyggarens KlokBok. Från hemsida till portal. (A Guide for the Portal Builder – from Home Page to Portal). Stockholm, NUTEK, 1999.
Grönlund, Å (With Mikael Jakobsson) Electronic services to the citizens - Usable and useful? In M. Karlson and B. Östlund (ed) Users in action. Stories of users and telematics in everyday life. KFB rapport 1999:8.
Grönlund, Å The Virtual Classroom. Report from trials with Web systems in Informatics Education (In Swedish). In PO Ågren (ed) IT i universitetsundervisningen. Umeå University, report 1997:1.

Refereed articles

Grönlund, Å.  Framing electronic government: e-mc3. Forthcoming in R. Traunmüller & K. Lenk (ed) Proceedings of DEXA 03, Berlin: Springer, 2003.
Grönlund, Å.  Private Sanctity Overriding Democratic Rigor. I R. Traunmüller & K. Lenk (ed) Electronic Government, pp 52-60. Berlin: Springer, 2002.
Grönlund, Å.  Emerging Electronic Infrastructures - in Search of Democratic Components. In Social Sciences Computer Review (Fall 2002).
Grönlund, Å. (withHällgren, M.) Internetval – succé eller fiasko? Försöket vid Umeå studentkår. HumanIT, 4/2002.
Grönlund, Å (with Mikael Wiberg). A distributed cognition analysis of mobile CSCW. In Proceedings of IRMA 2000, Anchorage, Alaska.
Grönlund, Å (with Mikael Wiberg) Mobile CSCW at Telia Nära: Five areas of questions for further research. Proceedings of IRIS (Information Research in Scandinavia) 2000, Trollhättan, Sweden.
Grönlund, Å  European Electronic Service Infrastructure Building - drifting into the future?. In proceedings of . In Proceedings of IRMA 2000, Anchorage, Alaska.
Grönlund, Å  Building an electronic service infrastructure in Europe - Process drifting and link missing. In proceedings of IFIP WG8.5 conference Advances in Electronic Government, Zaragoza, Spain, February 10-122, 2000.
Grönlund, Å (With Mikael Wiberg) Mobility in the Wild. In Proceedings of AMCIS conference, August 1999.
Grönlund, Å (With Mikael Wiberg). Social Aspects of Mobile Work; A Framework for Further Research and Design. Umeå University, Informatics, working paper.
Grönlund, Å  "Åk inte till Övik". En studie av användning av videokonfens i undervisning på en universitetskurs. (Study of video conferencing use in education) I Universitetspedagogisk konferens i Umeå 18-19 februari 1999, Umeå universitet.
Grönlund, Å  The road towards professional telematic service publishing. An empirical study of nine cities in eight countries. Proceedings of IFIP WG8.7 Conference. Helsinki December 1998.
Grönlund Å  Public Computer Systems - a new focus for information systems research. Information Infrastructure and Policy, 6, 1997/98, pp 47-65. IOS Press
Grönlund, Åke.  The 'Communications Manager' and the Electronic Citizens Office. Association of Management, 13th Annual Conference, August 2-5, 1995, Vancouver, Canada.
Grönlund, Å. Communication Quality at the Electronic Highway - A challenge for systems development. In Gricar, J. (ed) Electronic Commerce, Electronic Partnership. Proceedings of the 7th EDI-IOS Conference; Electronic Commerce - Electronic Partnership", Bled, Slovenia, 1994.
Grönlund, Å.  To Participate or not to Participate? The "democratic information problem" as a base for IS design. In Bansler, J, (Ed) Proceedings of the 16th IRIS (Information systems Research In Scandinavia). Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, Department of Computer Science, 1993.
Grönlund, Å.  (With Guohua Bai) Participatory Information Systems. Information Systems as Venues for Participation. In Avison, Kendall and DeGross (Eds) Human, Organizational, and Social Dimensions of Information Systems Development. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1993.
Grönlund, Å.  (With Guohua Bai) Participatory Information Systems. Supporting the Decision Process in Public Sector Information Systems. In Bots, Sol and Traunmüller (Eds) Decision Support in Public Administration. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1993.
Grönlund, Å.  (With Guohua Bai) Adaptive Decision Support Systems. The Feedback Learning Strategy as a New Way of Designing DSS. In Silver, M. (Ed) Transactions of the 12th International Conference on Decision Support Systems. Chicago: The Institute of Management Science (TIMS), 1992.

Project Reports (sample)

Grönlund, Å (With Ingrid Liljenäs, Mikael Wiberg, Daniel Brandt) IT i statlig verksamhet - ett medel för landsbygdens utveckling? (IT and rural development) Projektrapport. Stockholm: KFB.
Grönlund, Å (With Tuomo Kauranne, Olov Forsgren, Frank Hartkamp, Huberta Kritzenberger) Make IT Happen. A guide for the telematic service entrepreneur. Antwerpen: InformatikCentrum, Infosond Project, Final Report (270 p).
Grönlund, Å  Utvärdering av "IT-spridningsprojektet". Företagarnas Riksförbund, 1999. (Evaluation of Education in Electronic Commerce for SMEs in a EU project)
Grönlund Å  Utvärdering av "Trä-IT"-projektet. Lycksele kommun, 1999. (Evaluation of electronic communication among SMEs in a EU project)
Grönlund, Å (With Mikael Jakobsson). Utvärdering av användbarhet hos SSVHs webbkurser, del 2. Härnösand: SSVH, 1998. (Evaluation of usability of Web course material, part 2)
Grönlund, Å Med Mats Klingvall) SSVHs webbkurser; lärarnas och elvernas perspektiv. Härnösand: SSVH, 1998. (Evaluation of distance tuition for adults using Web and video conferencing)
Grönlund, Å (With Nils Arell och Margaretha Paulsson). Företag i nätverk över elektronisk infrastruktur. Stockholm, NUTEK, projekt P 7131-1. (Networked organizations)
Grönlund, Å IT i offentlig verksamhet. I Liljenäs, I. Strategi- och handlingsplan för Västerbottens län. Utveckling av Informationssamhället. Umeå: SNIC. (IT strategy for Västerbotten county, Sweden)
Grönlund, Å  Usability Evaluation Handbook Report D6, Infosond Project. Antwerpen: InformatikCentrum, 1997.
Grönlund, Å.  Report on Usability, Usefulness and Proscpected Use. Report D7, Infosond Project. Antwerp, ICA, 1997
Grönlund, Å (With Mikael Jakobsson). Utvärdering av användbarhet hos SSVHs webbmaterial. Härnösand, SSVH, 1997. Evaluation of usability of Web course material, part 1)