Pin‐yu Chu and Yueh‐yun Sun
* p < 0.05
Research arena and topic
Financing planning and public‐private partnership to finance e‐Government Establish pricing standards and mechanisms for e‐service and e‐transaction The impact of telecommunication rate policy under digital conversion on e‐governance
Mean( s. d.)
3.66( 0.76) 3.37( 1.00) 3.63( 1.03) p
PA Experts
0.233 3.70( 0.73)
0.453 3.15( 0.99)
0.466 3.40( 1.10)
Mean( s. d.)
MIS Experts 3.60( 0.83) 3.67( 0.98) 3.93( 0.88)
The top six important topics are( 1) quality management of cross‐boundary e‐governance( 4.46),( 2) e‐governance mechanisms to help create / add public values( 4.40),( 3) development of performance indicators that are result‐oriented and aligned with public values( 4.34),( 4) implementation of e‐Government performance systems and utilization of performance information to continuously improve e‐Government policies( 4.29),( 5) applications of information and communication technologies national emergency management and for addressing various challenges of aging society( 4.29), and( 6) creation and integration of national“ big” data for advancing public values( 4.23)( see Table 2). We also aggregate the scores of individual topics and identify the top three e‐governance research arenas:“ performance of e‐Government / e‐governance( 4.21),”“ specify topics that are forward‐looking, unique, and possessing comparative advantage( 4.21),” and“ establishing and innovating the institutions( laws, regulations, and governing structure and rules) of electronic governances( 4.10).” Our respondents compose two types of experts, i. e., scholars and practitioners with public administration background( PA background) and those with information technology and management background( MIS background). We utilize t‐test to determine whether there is statistically significant difference among them. The results indicate that none of the topic importance is significantly different for these two types of experts. However, it is worth mentioning that administration‐savvy experts make higher evaluations than technology‐savvy experts on topics of“ performance of e‐Government” and“ online citizen participation with cross‐sector collaboration” arenas. As for findings from the open‐ended questions, important e‐governance topics proposed include performance indicators that are result‐oriented and aligned with public values, collaboration with international e‐governance organizations, provision of pubic data sets, tools, and education, alleviation of internet addiction, joined cloud partnership, etc.
5. Discussions and conclusions
In this paper, we review diverse literature( including international reports, research fields in prestigious research centers, and international conference themes), and interview leading e‐governance scholars and practitioners to identify important future e‐governance policy / research topics. According to the preliminary efforts, we first mark out seven promising e‐governance research arenas with twenty‐two supplementary topics. We further conduct an online expert survey to narrow these topics down to six most important ones:“ quality management of cross‐boundary e‐governance,”“ e‐governance mechanisms to help create / add public values,”“ development of performance indicators that are result‐oriented and aligned with public values,”“ implementation of e‐Government performance systems and utilization of performance information to continuously improve e‐Government policies,”“ applications of information and communication technologies national emergency management and for addressing various challenges of aging society,” and“ creation and integration of national“ big” data for advancing public values.” The results imply that public values are the future directions of e‐governance. Most importantly, the optimal goal of e‐Government / e‐governance is to pursue or create more public values that will bring varieties of utility for multi‐stakeholders, and also take social equity into account. As a result, we re‐classify the seven arenas into three research foci to connect e‐governance with public values. The first focus is e‐governance performance and innovation, namely, public value driven e‐governance innovation, implementation, and performance evaluation. The second one is citizen participation and collaboration between stakeholders for transforming e‐governance institutions to enable cross‐boundary collaboration and develop rules and regulations for effective citizen online participation. The third one is visionary and competitive e‐governance in a globalized or regionalized context, including the pursuit of research topics with unique domestic features and global relevance such as emergency management and aging society. Despite all the care given to this study, there are several limitations that should be noted in any future research. Firstly, there is space to improve the diversity of online survey sample. Except the senior advisor of ICA, most of our respondents are scholars and practitioners from Asia and the US.
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