# A Novel ICT Framework for Sustainable Development Goals
## 5 The ICT Framework Description
### Governance Module  
This module aims:  
* To implement various modern theories of governance, in particular adaptive, network governance, collaborative, and accountable governance;
* To introduce and implement novel governance theories such as fair and trustworthy governance;
* To offer new forms of citizen engagement and more flexible and integrated modes of governing by adopting the theories of governance;
* To allow two-way communications between government and people and effective citizen engagement by enabling citizens (a) to raise awareness of particular issues; (b) to provide ideas for new, improved or future solutions; (c) to generate, develop and amend specific proposals individually, collectively or collaboratively; and/or with state officials; (d) to monitor and assess public actions and services; and (e) to make decisions e.g., through referendums, voting on specific proposals or participatory budgeting;
* To integrate knowledge about individual incentives and barriers to collection action, collaborative social learning and conflict resolution processes, and institutional arrangements for cross-boundary collaboration; and
* To provide means for the framework to have true impacts of SDGs by motivating citizens to participate in addressing SDGs and by enabling those in positions of power to endorse the framework. Global governance reflects the processes of governing global relationships between individuals and institutions aiming to manage their common affairs [192]. Improving global governance for sustainable development can only be achieved synergistically by considering \"regional, national and local circumstances, cutting across many policies, programmes, institutions and sectors\" [127] and by ensuring \"more inclusive participatory processes at local community scales\" [127]. The ICT platform to be developed by using the framework described here, will ensure \"transnational sharing, discussion and synthesis of different approaches\" to sustainable development governance enabling \"all participating actors to benefit from the global collective experience, and overcome key barriers to change including knowledge gaps, capacity challenges, or the absence of supportive political commitment\" [127]. Recently some scholars argued that SDGs present a novel approach to global governance, 'Governance through goals', which is marked by four characteristics [193; 194]: (1) goal-setting global governance is uncoupled to the international legal system as SDGs are not legally binding; (2) governance through goals provides weak institutional arrangements at the intergovernmental level; (3) goal-setting global governance ensures global inclusion and comprehensiveness [195; 196; 197] by considering input from at least 70 governments as well as numerous representatives of civil society; and (4) global governance through goals provides flexibility to national/regional options, outcomes, and desires. Reviewing various governance theories or even providing definitions of the concepts of adaptive governance, network governance, collaborative governance, and accountable governance, is beyond the scope of the paper. Previous literature on adaptive governance includes, for example, refs. [198; 199; 200]. [PERSON] et al. [201] use the term \"adaptive governance\" to expand the focus from adaptive management to address the explicit institutional context that supports adaptive management. Network governance represents a form of \"social organization in which interpersonal relational aspects such as trust, reciprocity and the pursuit of mutual benefit interact to forge jointly agreed and achieved outcomes\" [202]. As networks are an important form of multi-organizational governance [203], network governance has been studied in [204; 205; 206; 207]. Collaborative governance [208] includes any \"method of collective decision-making where public agencies and non-state stakeholders engage each other in a consensus-oriented deliberative process\" [209].