A Review of E-Government Assessment Frameworks: E-Readiness, Adoption, Citizen Engagement and Quality

Abstract

The rapid development of digitalization has impelled countries to adopt electronic government (e-government) to improve quality and efficiency, reduce costs and establish transparency in their transactions with the citizens, thereby, strengthening the government-citizens relationship. As e-government has become pivotal for development, it is essential to understand various frameworks available in the literature for evaluating a country’s e-government at different phases, from e-readiness to the realization of end benefits. Hence, this paper briefly reviews the e-government literature focusing on e-readiness, adoption, citizen engagement and performance and quality assessment frameworks. Further, a thematic analysis of the selected studies is carried out using NVivo and QDA Miner to map the main themes and subthemes and the associations among the selected studies. This paper contributes to the e-government literature with clear academic insights into different variables and dimensions in association with the evaluation of e-government and by setting a future research agenda for developing a holistic evaluation framework.

Analysis of e-government and digital society indicators over the years: a comparative study of the EU member states

“…European Commission (2022a) further elaborated that open data usage could refer to the activities people engage in to provide data to understand or change events within a particular system. Sheoran and Vij (2022) provided insights into different variables and dimensions that are used to evaluate a country’s e-government at different phases.…”

“…Since the first global assessment of e-government efforts (United Nations, 2002), the success of e-government initiatives has allowed for significant progress in delivery of digital public services to citizens and businesses (United Nations, 2022). E-government and digital society indicators have been observed as diverse, and within their diversity, they have opened the window to an understanding and appreciation of digitalisation at various levels (Sheoran and Vij, 2022). According to Cenfetelli (2004), benchmarking progress in e-government and the digital society is one of the more complex aspects of digitalisation and ranking of ICT use.…”

“…Information and communications technologies (ICTs) enabled delivery of digital public services to more people in an efficient and flexible way and removed the barrier that has been posed by distances in communication and interaction. This shift in communication has opened other channels that are fast, smart, convenient and traceable for everyone to engage with (Bertot et al , 2016; Lnenicka and Saxena, 2021; Pedrosa et al , 2020; Sheoran and Vij, 2022). Digitalisation and technological advances have made the world accessible to everyone and helped people interact across all domains of life, in a fast and convenient way (Elmassah and Hassanein, 2022; Perriam and Carter, 2021).…”

“…E-government and digital society indicators have been observed as diverse, and within their diversity, they have opened the window to an understanding and appreciation of digitalisation at various levels (Sheoran and Vij, 2022). According to Cenfetelli (2004), benchmarking progress in e-government and the digital society is one of the more complex aspects of digitalisation and ranking of ICT use.…”