Facilitating Circular Economy (CE)’s monitoring requires access to data from different systems and data spaces. Motivated by this, a number of organizations have established data sharing agreements in line with the European Interoperability Framework to facilitate technical, semantic, organisational, and legal interoperability. Each data space, however, may follow its own domain-specific semantics. While this supports data’s interoperability within the data space, it also poses a challenge in cases such as CE’s monitoring, which requires data from several data spaces to be accessed, combined and analyzed. Supporting findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data sharing not only within but also between data spaces is key. Ontology alignment can help facilitate semantic interoperability across data spaces and support CE’s monitoring. Following this, we present an upper-ontology-based alignment approach to aid CE’s monitoring in practice. We showcase the implementation of the approach for aligning the FEDeRATED upper-level ontology for data sharing with the RePlanIT (electronics), BattINFO (batteries) ontologies and the Catena-X (cars) data model. As a result, the alignments can be used by parties interested in data sharing between the battery, electronics and car data spaces to generate data sharing agreements, define data access controls and ultimately monitor CE’s implementation. We also share lessons learned from the implementation of the approach and provide a discussion on future directions for semantic-enabled CE monitoring.@en

Circular economy (CE) and sustainability are high on the political agenda of governments nationally and internationally. We see different regulatory developments where governments aim to put stricter rules and requirements towards businesses to ensure the transition toward a more circular and sustainable future. The use of digital infrastructures, including transparency systems and digital product passports is starting to play a vital role in supporting governments in their CE monitoring efforts. Yet there are challenges to be overcome. Many government procedures are set up in laying out very detailed requirements about what one government agency can do in a singular phase of the circular process (e.g., customs performing specific checks at the border) or a single Member State (e.g., organizing Extended Producer Responsibility in a specific country). While these efforts are valuable building stones towards CE monitoring, they are fragmented, and blank spots in CE monitoring occur when borders are crossed, and another country needs to take over the CE monitoring tasks. As for circularity, even if many efforts are spent by a single government agency or a single country, all these efforts may be in vain if the proper CE monitoring of the next step is not secured. While earlier research identified this problem, there is still limited understanding of the problem itself and directions to address it systematically. In this paper, following up on earlier research and with insights gained from an EU project on CE monitoring, we shed further light on the problem. More specifically we conceptualize CE monitoring by putting the CE flows at the center and exploring deficiencies for governments and businesses to safeguard the monitoring of CE flows. We examine two routes that can be followed to ensure continued CE monitoring when borders are crossed, namely the government route, as well as the business route (enabled by traceability systems and in-control mechanisms of businesses). We discuss the need for a global governance layer that can facilitate both routes and propose further directions to advance CE monitoring by taking a global perspective.

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To facilitate the transition toward a circular economy (CE), EU policymakers are drafting new policies and legislations at a high speed. This affects a wide set of sectors and leads to legislative complexity. At the same time, the legislative developments requiring Digital Product Passports (DPPs) offer opportunities for governments to tap into a rich set of business supply chain data for CE and sustainability monitoring. Nevertheless, the diversity of these legislative initiatives leads to complexity for governments on what needs to be monitored. There is a need to reduce legislative complexity, to have a more clear view on what governments need to monitor, which in turn would provide more clarity on the types of business data from the Digital Product Passports and digital infrastructures governments may need to access for CE and sustainability monitoring purposes. One approach to reduce the legislative complexity is to have a framework of high-level concepts for CE and sustainability monitoring. The question, however, is how to arrive at such a framework of high-level concepts. In this paper, we explore the potential of the concepts found in the UN Recommendation 46 (initially developed for the traceability of textiles), to serve as a basis for a generic framework of high-level concepts for CE and sustainability monitoring. We examine the suitability by applying the concepts from UN Recommendation 46 to a variety of legislations beyond textiles. Our analysis suggests that the framework has the potential to serve as a high-level framework of CE and sustainability monitoring concepts across sectors, and we identify several areas for further research.

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The transition from a linear economy towards a circular economy (CE), based on reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products, is one of the key priorities in pursuing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), where governments play a fundamental role, with the support of digital technologies.

Despite the increasing global policy focus on CE, research on the role of digital government in initiating, implementing, and consolidating a transition towards a circular economy is surprisingly scarce and fragmented, and a systematic effort in digital government research is yet to emerge.

To tackle this issue, this article sets out to answer the research question: what is the role of digital government in the transition towards a circular economy? Driven by this research question, we conduct a review on 88 empirical studies in the Information Systems (IS) and digital government fields and discuss existing research foci and gaps in relation to the types of digital technologies used, the types of stakeholders involved, the stages of the product life cycle, and the type of resources that governments draw on to advance the circular economy transition. In addition, we identify two types of transition styles, based on an analysis of the types of roles taken by the government in two cases of transition towards a circular economy.

Based on these findings, we provide two contributions to establishing a new line of research in digital government and the circular economy: an analytical framework, including a static view, a longitudinal view, and a transition style view of the role of digital government in the circular economy transition; and a research agenda that builds on our framework, to guide future research on the role of digital government in the circular economy transition.@en

The transition towards a circular economy (CE) will require data sharing across different platforms and data spaces of parties operating in a variety of supply chains. From a circular economy compliance monitoring perspective, beyond the access to mandatory data that governments will receive, authorities may benefit from accessing additional business data from the source on a voluntary basis, which is challenging. While platforms and data spaces solve a great deal of complexity and interoperability within their realm, platform, and data space interoperability is still challenging. In the logistics domain, efforts have been made to overcome these issues of data sharing across logistics platforms with a Semantic data sharing architecture developed by the CEF FEDeRATED Action, at the heart of which is a semantic model aligning other semantic models for logistics. In this paper, we take the Semantic data sharing architecture as a point of departure and examine the opportunities and limitations that it has for CE monitoring, and how it relates to other developments in the EU and beyond. Many of these developments acknowledge the need for data access across heterogeneous systems and – processes of actors; others add security and trust to data sharing that goes all the way to the level to cover legal obligations. The goal of this paper is to gain further insights into how data sharing across multiple platforms and data spaces enables circular economy monitoring, where government organizations would need to address the issue of how they would interface with, and access data that resides in multiple platforms and data spaces. We found that the various models can be aligned on some architecture principles that promote interoperability across dimensions (e.g. federation, keeping data at the source), yet they still differ on other dimensions (e.g. data model and semantics, as well as how they address issues of identification, authentication and authorization). We suggest further efforts towards developing meta-level agreements and standardization for data space interoperability and we propose further research directions on that topic.@en

Monitoring the circular economy (CE) transition requires data sharing and collaboration between public and private actors. However, businesses are reluctant to share data with authorities for monitoring purposes due to fear of losing control over sensitive data. The emerging technology Multi-Party Computation (MPC), which enables collaborative data analysis while maintaining data control, could address barriers in business-to-government (B2G) data sharing and collaboration. This ongoing research aims to explore the potential of MPC in facilitating B2G data sharing and collaboration for CE monitoring under the conditions of inter-organizational trust and data control. Drawing on a B2G data sharing framework, our initial findings suggest that MPC can benefit authorities in accessing sensitive business data, while businesses can benefit from controlling shared data for compliance reporting. As MPC can be deployed in various architectures, the next research steps are to examine links between variants of MPC architectures and different data-sharing solutions.

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To access business data for compliance monitoring of the circular economy (CE), governments would need to deal with issues of both legislative complexities arising from many new regulations in the area of CE and sustainability, as well as the digital complexity for accessing business data that resides in different business systems and data spaces. While earlier research has touched upon (1) the legal complexity through the identification of common high-level concepts of what to monitor, and (2) the digital complexities through the use of upper ontologies, so far these aspects have been treated to a large extent in isolation and not been linked systematically. In this research in progress paper, we propose an approach on how to link the two, discuss advances in the area and limitations, and identify areas that need to be addressed to allow governments to tap into the rich business data sources for compliance monitoring in the future.@en

In this paper we present a high-level framework for business and government requirements analysis of detection technology, taking emerging policy developments related to circular economy monitoring into account. The framework was developed in the context of the PARSEC research project on postal and parcel eCommerce flows.

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In this paper, we propose a framework for circular economy monitoring by looking at the issue of border crossing and levels of control.@en

The European Commission initiated a series of Directives and Regulations that aim to turn the linear economy into a climate-neutral and circular economy. Business-to-government information- sharing arrangements play an essential role in monitoring compliance with these regulatory measures. To this end data from the supply chain of products needs to be combined to create a full picture of the product life cycle. This requires the design of data-sharing arrangements in which businesses and governments share data. The EU proposal to introduce the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) obliges EU importers and non-EU exporters to buy carbon certificates for goods imported into the EU Customs Union. Upon implementation, the CBAM will require monitoring activities by the EU Custom Authorities. We use the case of the import of steel for the EU automotive industry to explore the required data, scenarios for (voluntary) data sharing, and the role of (future) digital infrastructures for e-government. Our analysis shows that data sharing for compliance with the CBAM Regulation is relatively simple. However, if Customs Authorities need to go beyond the monitoring of single regulations, the situation becomes more complex. In addition, the diversity of data sources owned by a network of actors in different (future) digital infrastructures will increase. Future research needs to go beyond data-sharing solutions for monitoring single regulations for circular economy towards combined data sharing for multiple regulations. This requires alignment between public and private interests to limit the administrative burden for businesses and government and an assessment of which digital infrastructures developed can be used to support data sharing. @en

The complex societal problems that we face today require unprecedented collaboration and evidence-based decisions. These collaboration processes are further propelled by the datafication of virtually all spheres of public life. To benefit from this, the data needs to be made available to allow for data analytics. Thus, data sharing becomes a crucial aspect of cross-sector collaborations that aim to create and capture value from information. Compared to collaborations where data sharing is not the main goal, data sharing partnerships face a number of novel challenges, such as mitigating data risks, complying with data protection legislation, and ensuring responsible data use. Navigating these waters and achieving data sharing can be challenging for both governments and businesses, as well as other actors. How do organizations from different sectors manage to achieve data sharing for addressing societal challenges? To address this research question, we apply a framework of three models of cross sector social partnerships developed in the field of organization studies to structure the analysis of six cases. Our analysis suggests that to a certain extent the partnership model determines the types of drivers and challenges to sharing data in a partnership. Leveraging the drivers and anticipating these challenges can help organizations be more aware of key terms of the collaboration and the mechanisms that can be used to succeed in their partnership goals.@en

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have paved the way toward a more sustainable future. The 2019 EU Green Deal and the 2020 EU Circular Economy Action Plan [1] introduce laws and regulations to facilitate and encourage the transition towards sustainability and a circular economy (CE). For the implementation of these regulatory measures, public authorities face the challenge to gain access to relevant business data for compliance monitoring. Digital infrastructures and access to business data (sources) such as the material composition of products are useful for compliance monitoring, however CE-relevant data is spread across multiple platforms of the supply chain partners and across multiple supply chains. Therefore, digital infrastructures and information-sharing arrangements need to be developed to create visibility and traceability for monitoring the circular economy flows. In this paper, we use a conceptual framework with four dimensions (context, actors, public value, and digital infrastructures) to analyze key actors and potential data of value they hold in their digital infrastructures to explore options for data-sharing solutions.
By focusing predominantly on the actor dimension, we analyze a case study in the automotive industry, taking the perspective of two focal Dutch governmental actors: Customs and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. In our analysis, we also show how this actor dimension is linked to the other dimensions: context, public value, and digital infrastructures. These dimensions
play an instrumental role in navigating through the complex actornetwork in a systematic way toward identifying pathways for the development of digital infrastructures and data-sharing solutions for circular economy monitoring.@en

Public value creation is traditionally considered as the citizens' collective expectations with respect to government and public services. Recent e-government literature indicates that what exactly constitutes public value in digital government is still debated. Whereas previous research acknowledges aspects such as co-production and the orchestration role of government in the context of public value creation, there is only a limited understanding of how public value is created by the interactions between government and business actors, and the role digital technologies play in that process. Furthermore, so far, research into public value creation processes is limited to specific services that aim to meet a specific goal; for a more complete view, an integrative perspective is required to address the multiplicity of goals. Societal challenges including climate change, sustainability, and the transition towards circularity will require governments to play a crucial role. Businesses are also transforming their vision by adding societal goals to their economic objectives and contributing to these societal challenges. This necessitates even more the need to explicitly consider the role of business in public value creation processes. In this paper we argue that there is a need to understand public value creation as an interactive process, involving both government and business actors. In this process, voluntary information sharing enabled by digital infrastructures has the potential to contribute to the value creation processes, but the increased complexity of digital technologies obscures the effects they can have on value creation. Therefore, we develop a framework that allows to reason about public value creation as an interactive process, involving government and businesses, facilitated by voluntary information sharing. The framework also allows to reason about how the technological design choices of the underlying digital infrastructure influence this value creation process. For the framework development, we use an in-depth case study from the domain of international trade. We analyze the interactions between customs authorities and supply chain actors for jointly creating public value related to revenue collection, as well as safety and security of goods entering the European Union, using business data made available via a global blockchain-enabled infrastructure. In future research, the framework that we developed can be used to analyze more complex cases with additional public value aspects, such as sustainability and circularity.@en

In this paper we propose a high-level framework for Green Customs which links the policy developments related to circular economy (CE), to customs and related stakeholder groups, customs activities, and customs innovative capabilities. The framework allows customs to better understand these links and identify capability gaps for circular economy monitoring and steer the developments in order to be better prepared for the future. @en

This article proposes a conceptual model to address the structural holes in data sharing between (and beyond) actors in the circular built environment supply chain and monitoring circular economy progress. Current digital innovations such as material passports and Building Information Modelling applications aim at increasing quality and availability of information about materials and their application in buildings to facilitate future reuse or recycling, based on the idea of buildings-as-material-banks. Although these approaches offer great potential to recover value from building materials, they mainly focus on a single building and have a limited capacity to exchange data with other supply chain actors in a timely manner. In this article, we argue that there is a need for an integrated digital infrastructure that expands beyond the industries and countries for enabling a connected global circular economy. Therefore, this article proposes an initial conceptualization of a digital infrastructure towards achieving a circular built environment. The proposed model puts forward three interoperable components: The Data Pipeline, Passport Generator, and Passport Pool, based on emerging technologies such as blockchain technology, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.@en

Sustainability is high on the agendas of public and private organizations. Governments are setting targets for reducing the use of virgin raw materials in products and to eliminate waste. To accelerate the transition towards a Circular Economy (CE) policymakers are launching instruments. However, policy instruments, such as financial incentives or new regulatory guidelines, are prone to manipulations when the stakes for the involved stakeholders are high. Therefore, policymakers and government authorities need a solid system to monitor and control the implementation and effectiveness of their CE measures. To this end, digital technologies are key to enabling visibility and monitoring of materials flows. They allow governments and other stakeholders to use data to steer the transition towards a CE. However, data from different materials supply chains reside in a diversity of digital platforms used by a diversity of stakeholders involved. Blockchain-based platforms can support the required visibility by combining data from different stakeholders across different materials supply chains. But connecting all data for CE visibility throughout the entire materials flows into one singular platform is unlikely. With the growing number of blockchain-based platforms that each covers parts of data on CE flows, there is a need to assess the level of visibility they offer and to determine which data is lacking to monitor full CE flows. In this article, the development of a framework to evaluate blockchain-enabled information systems on their ability to act as monitoring systems for CE purposes is presented. The design science research approach was followed to develop the framework. Insights provided by academic literature as well as empirical data from three extant blockchain-enabled platforms were used (i.e., TradeLens, FoodTrust, and Vinturas). The evaluation framework can be deployed by public and private actors (e.g., governments and banks) for monitoring purposes, but also by IT providers to offer CE visibility solutions.@en

Circular economy is high on the political agenda, with governments at all levels setting ambitious goals to move away from traditional linear production models, where goods are used and disposed as waste, towards a future with less use of virgin raw materials, and where valuable materials at a product end-of-life are returned as raw materials or in an environmentally-friendly way to the biosphere. While circular economy is gaining a lot of attention on a policy level, the role that digital government can play to facilitate the circular economy transition is largely unexplored. We carry out a review of existing literature in the fields of digital government and Information Systems (IS) to identify the roles played by digital government in the circular economy. Based on an analysis of 54 empirical research articles, we identify foci and gaps in relation to the different types of roles played by government (nodality, authority, treasure, and organization), to stages of the Product Life Cycle (preuse, in-use, and post-use), and to types of digital technology focused on. Based on these findings, we present an analytical framework to guide future research on digital government in relation to the circular economy, and exemplify the use of the framework drawing on examples from circular economy initiatives in the automotive industry. @en