Agnes Mainka et al.
Increased use of ICT and knowledge management between authorities and citizens or businesses optimises services in e‐Government and imposes an obligation to actively engage in political debate and decision‐making processes on citizens and companies( Gisler, 2001; Kettl, 2002; Sriramesh & Rivera‐Sanchez, 2006; Sharma & Palvia, 2010, 2). In this paper, we analyse this phenomenon and take a closer look at e‐Government as the fundamental pillar of eGovernance. According to Moon( 2002), e‐Government sees an interaction between the levels of information, communication, transaction, integration and participation. We thus conducted an empirical survey of the government websites of 31 Informational World Cities, adapting Moon’ s five‐stage model( 2002) in order to find quantitative indicators for these phases of e‐Government.
Figure 1: Informational world cities
Our research questions are:( 1) What is the state of maturity of e‐Government in Informational World Cities?( 2) How high( or how low) is the usability of navigation systems on Informational World Cities’ government websites?
Our study is one of the first quantitative empirical analyses of maturity at a city level. Our comparative usability analysis is consequently based upon task‐based user tests of the governmental websites’ navigation systems. Both studies are globally oriented and focussed on cities of the knowledge society.
293