Pin‐yu Chu and Yueh‐yun Sun
public organizations, and achievement of socially desirable outcomes. These discussions clearly show that public administration aims at producing value for citizens and e‐Government is a means to improve the public value( Castelnovo and Simonetta 2007).
3. Methodological approach
The general research strategy has two components. This study first examines a multitude of literature of e‐Government performance ranking to identify a list of shared indicators and gathers research reports that highlight e‐governance research topics of global significance. The other component is to gain insight from e‐governance experts in various countries and sectors. We conduct in‐depth interviews with the leaders of various e‐governance research centers to gain their insights, and perform an online survey of domestic and international e‐governance experts from April to August of 2012.
3.1 In‐depth interview
Six e‐Government experts we interview include( 1) Dr. Charlie Schweik, associate director of NCDG,( 2) Dr. Toshio Obi, director of WASEDA e‐Government research center,( 3) Dr. Jeffrey Cole, director of Center for the Digital Future,( 4) Dr. Sharon Dawes, senior researcher of CTG,( 5) Dr. Tomasz Janowski, director of UNU‐IIST center for e‐governance, and( 6) Dr. Fengchun Yang, director of academy of e‐Government. Most of interviewees emphasize the importance of visionary e‐Government research and highlight critical trends in e‐governance. Particularly, Obi stresses on the development of ICT for an aging society; and Janowski regards smart cities as the main work for local governments.
The intensive review of literature and document has generated a long list of promising e‐governance policy and research topics. The in‐depth interviews help us further narrow the list down to seven promising arenas, including( 1) institutional innovation( laws, regulations, and governing structure and rules) of electronic governances,( 2) quality planning and management of e‐Government,( 3) performance of e‐governance,( 4) online citizen participation with cross‐sector collaboration,( 5) strategic foresight planning of e‐governance,( 6) globalized / regionalized e‐governance, and( 7) financing e‐Government( budget, pricing, fees, etc.).
3.2 Online‐survey
Our survey questionnaire is developed by the amalgamation of interview results and literature discussed in the previous sections, particularly those related to( 1) comments on the visionary concepts and developmental strategies of the e‐Government,( 2) trends and impacts of ICTs on e‐governance, and( 3) continuous improvement and performance evaluation of e‐Government services. The final questionnaire includes two major parts. The first part, in accordance to the seven promising e‐governance research arenas, is composed of twenty‐two topics as shown in Table 2. The second part contains open‐ended questions to allow the respondents to write down other significant topics not included in the first part.
This survey is by invitation only. Thirty‐five leading e‐governance scholars and practitioners, such as associate director of NCDG, senior researcher of CTG, senior advisor of international council for information technology in government administration( ICA), chairman of Global Mobile Corporation, assistant general manager of department of public affairs, IBM Taiwan, editorial director of FutureGov, director of department of informational management, directorate‐general of budget, accounting and statistics, etc., participate in this survey.
4. Research results
The online survey uses five‐point Likert‐type scale descriptors(“ 1” =“ extremely unimportant” and“ 5” =“ extremely important”) to measure the importance of the twenty‐two e‐Government topics. To choose highly significant topics, we apply t tests with a null hypothesis that the average score of the respondents’ perceived importance is 3.5, and with an alternative hypothesis that it is greater than 3.5. Table 2 provides aggregate descriptive statistics and gives the level of significance( p value) for each research topic. All topics are significantly important except six topics listed in a descending order of“ the influence of international norms / standards over national / domestic e‐governance( 3.77),”“ providing mechanisms for driving and sustaining innovation( 3.74),”“ financing planning and public‐private partnership to finance e‐Government( 3.66),”“ the impact of telecommunication rate policy under digital conversion on e‐governance( 3.63),”
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