Editorial: Twentieth Anniversary of the European Group of Public Administration's Permanent Study Group on ICTs in Public Administration

In September 2006, at the European Group of Public Administration’s (EGPA) Annual Conference at Bocconi University in Milan, the Permanent Study Group on informatisation in Public Administration celebrated its twentieth anniversary. What started as a small band of men at an EGPA Conference workshop on ‘Effects of Technology on Administration’ has grown into a strong, institutionalised network of European public administration scholars with a special interest in the introduction, management and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Public Administration, and their wider implications. Two decades later, an impressive legacy of conference papers, books and journal articles, as well as a leading international journal, demonstrate the success of the ‘Informatisation’ Study Group in building a substantial body of knowledge in a new topic field for public administration. To celebrate this memorable occasion, a special event was organised where longstanding members of the Study Group, together with past and present Study Group Chairs and EGPA president Professor Geert Bouckaert, reflected upon the past, present and future of the Study Group’s activities. Various Study Group members prepared reflective essays for this event, and these are presented in this Special Issue of Information Polity. Besides reflections on the unique character of this European Public Administration Study Group, such as the strong network and team spirit among Study Group members in developing a shared body of knowledge, the friendships developed over time, and the opportunities offered to young scholars, these contributions together present an interesting overview of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, a “SWOT-analysis”, of twenty years of academic research and debate on ICTs in Public Administration. First of all in this Special Issue, Founding Father of the Study Group Ignace Snellen shares his reflections with us on the question: ‘Is “Informatisation” after 20 years still a “corpus alienum” in Public Administration? His remembrances go back to the very first Study Group activity in Copenhagen: an extraordinary meeting where for instance one of the two papers prepared for this inaugural workshop was received with utter disbelief by the majority of workshop participants. This profound reaction however did not restrict the development of a fruitful European research programme on informatisation at the macro-, mesoand micro-levels of public administration. In his overview of academic outputs within each of these research streams, Snellen pays particular attention to the fundamental implications of changes happening at the micro-level of public administration as a result of informatisation. His explanation of the lack of interest of public administration scholars for these deep changes in policy implementation is the fact that public administration scholars are focused on the strategic aspects of