Agnes Mainka et al.
2. E‐Government according to Moon’ s five‐stage model
The fundamental research we based our own work on refers to a definition of e‐Government and to theoretical models trying to describe its development. Hiller and Bélanger( 2001) address privacy strategies for e‐Government. They provide a detailed definition, background and a framework of e‐Government. Contrary to the proposed four‐stage model by Layne & Lee( 2001), they present an extended five‐stage model. The additional stage is participation( i. e. voting, registration or posting comments online). This could be seen as a sub‐set of the previous stage named“ two‐way communication,” but the authors see these features as so significant as to warrant naming a separate category for them. In terms of privacy concerns, too, their unique sensitivity makes it useful to see these functions as distinct. Great care for authentication and security is needed for this stage. Moon( 2002) adopted the e‐Government stage model by Hiller and Bélanger( 2001) in order to map the e‐Government framework and examine the rhetoric and reality of e‐Government at a municipal level. In his model he lists practices, effectiveness data and barriers for the stages. The study shows that many municipal governments are still at either stage 1 or 2 of their development and merely post and disseminate information or provide channels for two‐way communication( public service request). Moon examines the state of municipal e‐Government implementation and assesses its effectiveness. He explores two institutional factors that contribute to the adoption of e‐Government, namely the size and type of government.
Many( theoretical) models or stage models have been introduced in order to determine the development of e‐ Government. Coursey and Norris( 2008) investigate some of these normative models with reference to control; to see whether they are accurate or useful in understanding the actual development of e‐ Government. Criticism is based on empirical evidence from 3 surveys of local e‐Government in the United States. These outcomes show that the local governments were mainly informational, with few transactional functions, but no high‐level functions were predicted in the models. Therefore, the authors point out that the models investigated, by Layne and Lee( 2001) and Hiller and Bélanger( 2001), do not describe the development process accurately, at least not among American local governments. According to Coursey and Norris, these models are purely speculative and have been developed without any link to the literature about government. The examined e‐Government offerings are limited, primarily involving information and non‐transactional services. Only few governments provided non‐financial transactions, and even fewer provided financial transactions. Referring to these results, the authors question the models because their predictions that governments will move stepwise towards the adoption of more sophisticated e‐Government offerings approaching integration and transaction was not seen to be confirmed. This purported movement is either not happening, or proceeding at a glacial pace. The models have serious limitations because they miss or ignore the possibility of existing barriers to e‐Government adoption. Finally, there are no recognizable steps or stages in e‐Government. Rather, governments adopt e‐Government slowly and incrementally after an initial e‐ Government presence, so that organisational and political factors are likely to significantly affect the development, performance and adoption of e‐Government application.
In a nutshell, these are Moon ' s five stages( 2002):
Stage 1: Information dissemination. At this point not only the content of the information is important, but also such aspects as usability and accessibility( Al‐Khalifa, 2010; Chen, Chen & Shao, 2006; Hyun, Choi & Kim, 2007; Shi, 2007; U. K. Cabinet Office, 2005).
Stage 2: Communication. The next stage is that of( two‐way) communication, which nowadays oscillates more and more around social media. In matters of so‐called Government 2.0, there is an increased interest in social media and its correlation to e‐Government( Bonsón et al., 2012; Nam, 2011).
Stage 3: Transaction. This stage consists of financial and non‐financial transactional e‐Government services such as renewing a driver’ s licence, voter registration, state park information and reservation, paying taxes and penalties etc.( Cook, 2000). A critical success factor for all transactional services is the users ' trust( Kumar et al., 2007; OECD, 2009).
Stage 4: Interoperability( Integration). Pardo, Nam & Burke( 2011) claim that the key component of these initiatives is the ability of multiple governmental and non‐governmental organizations to share and integrate information across their organisational boundaries.
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