What do we know from the literature on public e-services?.

Public e-services are a broad and growing research field in which scholars and practitioners from different domains are involved. However, the increasing attention devoted to public e-services only partially captures the extreme variety of aspects and implications of the diffusion of information and communication technologies at all levels of public administrations. The paper aims to develop a meta-analysis of the literature on the delivery, diffusion, adoption and impact of public e-services and examines current research trends in terms of differences in methodologies, approaches and key indicators across five service platforms: eGovernment, eEducation, eHealth, Infomobility and eProcurement. We examined 751 articles appeared in 2000-2010 in the top international academic journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), as classified in the following fields: Communication, Economics, Education, Environmental Studies, Geography, Health Policy & Services, Information Science & Library Science, Law, Management, Planning & Development, Public Administration, Transportation and Urban Studies. We highlight a significant heterogeneity in scientific production across service domains, countries covered by empirical analyses, indicators used, and affiliation of authors. We also show an increasing diffusion of quantitative methods applied to different research fields which still appears to be constrained by data limitations. The overall picture emerging from the analysis is one characterized by largely unexplored service domains as well as scarcely analyzed issues both across and within individual service platforms (e.g. front vs. back office issues). Thus many research opportunities seem to emerge and need to be exploited from different disciplinary perspectives in this field of analysis.eGovernment, eEducation, eHealth, Infomobility, eProcurement, Bibliometrics, Metaanalysis, Innovation in services, Public e-services

Identifying Factors of E-Government Acceptance – A Literature Review

The digital revolution has arrived in the halls of public administrations. E-Government, which has been a buzzword for all kinds of computer usage in the governmental context for several years, has started to become an ordinary way for public administrations to organise their work. Document and workflow management systems as well as process reorganisation in the backend and electronic taxation systems or digital ID cards on the frontend side all belong to the portfolio of concepts summarised by e-Government. However, in spite of the advantages that go along with these developments, adoption of e-Government services is still rather low both on the citizens’ side as well as by the employees of public administrations. We conducted a literature review identifying the factors that influence the acceptance of e-Government services by different stakeholders and provide a framework of future research needs

Measuring eGovernment Portal Management on the Local Level: Results from a Survey of Public Administration Officials

Given the importance of eGovernment portals as an integral access interface of modern public service provision, this contribution concentrates on the issue of the dimensions and derived success factors of these information systems. Starting with the DeLone & McLean IS success model and the resource-based view as foundations, this article conceptualizes the important success factors of eGovernment portals and then integrates these into a research model. The empirical results show the importance of the different dimensions of eGovernment Portal Management as well as the development of eGovernment portals so far. For public service portals on the local level the key management dimensions are information, system, service and privacy management. The evaluation of these dimensions as well as perceived internal and external success in public administration institutions complement user-based quality assessments and highlight organizational strengths and weaknesses

ICT–supported reforms of service delivery in Flemish cities: testing the concept of 'information ecology'

This paper explores organizational reforms in Flemish cities related to making the cities’ individual service delivery more efficient, customer orientated, customer friendly and integrated. The paper is the first one of a recently started research project and PhD research about the complexity of managing ICT-supported change of ‘individual’ service delivery. The overall objective of this paper is to set the stage for the research project’s research design in terms of its theoretical framework. Therefore, we report about our first explorative, inductive and descriptive findings related to this type of change within one city. We firstly inductively report about the objectives and the objects of change. Secondly, we develop a provisional theoretical framework. We therefore take the notion of an information ecology as a conceptual starting point and use a combination of elements of neo-institutional theory, system theory and a political perspective on organizational development. In order to explore the potentialities of this approach, we test the framework’s value for understanding the changes within the city. The framework enabled us to describe and analyze this type of reforms without neglecting the complexity of these changes. It tries to link some important public administration theories to the study of the e-government phenomenon that is still an important challenge. The most important lesson is that further refinement of the conceptual framework is needed. Although the analysis shows that the framework offers a conceptual basis to analyze front and back office reforms within public organizations, it still lacks a full and straightforward operationalization of its components, constructs, relations, etc

E-government systems success and user acceptance in developing countries: The role of perceived support quality

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Electronic government (e-Government) projects create numerous benefits and opportunities for both governments and citizens worldwide. Accordingly, the increasing interest in e-Government raises the issue of how governments can increase citizen adoption and usage of their on-line services. The successful adoption of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), the explosive increase in Internet usage and the rapid development of e-commerce in private sectors have placed pressure on public organisations to interact electronically with citizens. Conversely, the success of e-Government does not depend only on the supplier side, but also on the demand side and the willingness to adopt the on-line service. The concept of e-Government was developed and implemented initially in industrialised countries. Consequently, it should not be assumed that this concept is automatically appropriate for developing countries. Thus far, e-Government still faces major challenges as it continues to expand in developing countries. Moreover, when introducing e-Government to developing nations, it is anticipated that more effort will be necessary than in developed countries. The objective of various e-Government initiatives has moved in the past decade towards establishing services offering greater accessibility for citizens. As a result, it is necessary to examine all possible factors to explain citizens' adoption and usage of such systems. Hence, numerous models of e-Government adoption and intention to use and their extensions have been proposed and applied to empirical studies. Obviously, e-Government has occurred due to the technological revolution following the diffusion of the Internet and the success of information systems (IS) in organisations and e-Commerce. However, regardless of their success within the general IS context, the models are limited in terms of considering the diversity of users; they tend to assume that all end-users are homogeneous. The end-users of e-Government systems are more diverse than e-Commerce, with comparisons of wider layers of user groups (for example, elderly and less well-educated people) who are more likely to encounter problems while interacting with e-Government systems. IS literature confirmed that users’ technical capabilities and management support are influenced by their technical knowledge and expertise. Therefore, this research argues that perceived support quality is a new way of looking at citizens’ adoption and usage in the e-Government system’s field and a major factor of e-Government system’s acceptance, particularly in developing countries. This study is the first to examine the roles of perceived support quality and support satisfaction in the context of government-to-citizen (G2C), and it aims to advance knowledge within the field of e-Government by revealing the roles of perceived support quality and satisfaction towards behaviour intention and usage in developing countries. The proposed model builds upon Wixom and Todd’s (2005) theoretical model, which, in turn, was based on the integration of DeLone and McLean model (1992) into the technology acceptance model (TAM). The strength of the integrated model lies in its ability to guide both IT design and predict usage behaviours towards the system under investigation, and assume the overall theoretical model to maintain validity in G2C settings. Thirteen hypotheses were formulated to test the proposed research model. Behaviour intention to use e-Government services was proposed as the dependent variable, while the independent variables were information quality; information satisfaction; system quality; system satisfaction; social influence; performance expectancy; effort expectancy; perceived support quality and support satisfaction. A quantitative approach was deemed best suited to test the proposed model. Using a survey method (i.e. paper-based and an on-line survey), a total of 1252 responses was collected; however, only 628 were analysed. To test the proposed e-Government model, the state of Kuwait was chosen as the application area and the official website of Kuwait Government On-line Services (KGOS) was selected, since it offers a number of services on-line. Elements were citizens who have had prior experience with the KGOS website, and the survey was conducted from 5th August to 10th October 2010. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was selected as the statistical analysis technique with the Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software. A total of 40 percent of the variance among the factors of support satisfaction, system satisfaction, information quality, effort expectancy and performance expectancy was explained by behavioural intention to use an e-Government system. All hypotheses were supported except for one. The findings confirm the significance to the support quality perceived by citizens, and also provide insights into whether user satisfaction literature and TAMs should be integrated to explain citizens’ intention to use e-Government systems. Thus, in terms of the theoretical implications, this study highlights the significance of recognising theoretical relationships when performing empirical research in e-Government settings. Consequently, to capture both the technical aspects and the services provided on-line, a new variable was introduced and renamed ‘perceived support quality’. Additionally, the model offers managers a new perspective for dealing with e-Government adoption by signifying the importance of support quality perceived by citizens. The proposed model provides government decision-makers in developing countries with an appropriate approach to determining which factors require attention in order to reap the highest benefits from e-Governments’ projects. This suggests paying less attention to the social influence (SI) factor and consider instead improving the quality of on-line support citizens demand

COBRA framework to evaluate e-government services: A citizen-centric perspective

E-government services involve many stakeholders who have different objectives that can have an impact on success. Among these stakeholders, citizens are the primary stakeholders of government activities. Accordingly, their satisfaction plays an important role in e-government success. Although several models have been proposed to assess the success of e-government services through measuring users' satisfaction levels, they fail to provide a comprehensive evaluation model. This study provides an insight and critical analysis of the extant literature to identify the most critical factors and their manifested variables for user satisfaction in the provision of e-government services. The various manifested variables are then grouped into a new quantitative analysis framework consisting of four main constructs: cost; benefit; risk and opportunity (COBRA) by analogy to the well-known SWOT qualitative analysis framework. The COBRA measurement scale is developed, tested, refined and validated on a sample group of e-government service users in Turkey. A structured equation model is used to establish relationships among the identified constructs, associated variables and users' satisfaction. The results confirm that COBRA framework is a useful approach for evaluating the success of e-government services from citizens' perspective and it can be generalised to other perspectives and measurement contexts. Crown Copyright © 2014.PIAP-GA-2008-230658) from the European Union Framework Program and another grant (NPRP 09-1023-5-158) from the Qatar National Research Fund (amember of Qatar Foundation

Integrating IS success model with cybersecurity factors for e-government implementation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The electronic government (E-Gov) Systems are currently getting recognized as an authentic strategically tool in delivering E-services. Considering the development of information system (IS) as well as the expanding of the internet-based applications in KSA, E-Gov has always been a significant aspect in delivering governmental services. This research has adopted the (IS) success model by both DeLone and McLean (D&M), moreover, it adopted technology acceptance model (TAM) with cybersecurity factors, both models were implemented to discover the status of the IS success then investigate cybersecurity aspects that impact the service efficiency and effectiveness in KSA. Consequently, this research aims to create a model to investigate the IS success model along with cybersecurity factors that influence E-Gov services effectiveness and usage. Therefore, a survey has been applied as the major data gathering approach; the survey has been distributed among 211 users of E-Gov services consistently. Moreover, all research findings were attained through a quantitative method using the structural equation modelling (SEM). Findings revealed that the constructs fundamental of the (IS) success model are strongly influencing users' satisfaction (US) of the E-Gov services; correspondingly, the fundamental constructs factors of cybersecurity with TAM appear to have a strong impacts on perceived risk (PR), in addition, both which affect the E-Gov services towards usage and effectiveness