13th European Conference on eGovernment – ECEG 2013 1 | Page 407

Olaseni Muritala Okunola and Jennifer Rowley

5. Discussion

Our scale demonstrates the value of taking a holistic perspective to the user experience of e‐Government, in that our scale embeds factors from the different perspectives on the evaluation e‐Government websites. For example, the factors, barriers and benefits, have primarily been discussed previously in the context of the technology adoption literature. On the other hand, factors such as ease of use and website quality, typically associated with the service quality literature are also shown to be important. However, we also surface two new and one re‐affirmed dimensions of the e‐Government user experience: security and support, convenience and content and information, the first two of which have drawn items from item sets previously associated with other factors. In each case, there is some previous evidence to suggest that these factors are important, but these factors have not previously consistently been included in scales for measuring the user experience.

In the case of security and support, there is previous evidence that technical support provided by e‐ Government websites can significantly affected the user experience of the e‐Government website( Kotamraju and van der Geest 2011; Law and Sun 2012). More specifically, the provision of the technical support effects the perception of credibility of citizens related to the use of services( Bertot et al. 2008) and may therefore have links to trust and perceptions of security. Support may be another incarnation of service reliability, which is identified by Halaris et al.( 2007) as being present in many of the scales associated with e‐Government or e‐ service quality. Security is also identified by Halaris et al( 2007), and Rowley( 2006) as being included in a number of existing scales. Colesca( 2009) also suggests that security and privacy issues have hindered the user experience concerning the e‐Government websites. Others have also commented on users of the e‐ Government websites concerns that arise form their perceptions that of risks in online financial activities( Dibbell 2012; Parker 2011). Perhaps the most interesting outcome from our study is that security and support load onto one factor. In addition, security and privacy would appear to be of particular concern in the context of Nigerian e‐Government services( Kazeem 2011).

The other new dimension is that of convenience. Convenience emerges as a separate dimension, but composed entirely of items that have previously been clustered under the more general dimension of benefits. Again, others have commented on the importance of convenience and the ability for the users to be able to use the e‐Government services how, when and where they want it( Cabinet Office 1998; Meuter et al. 2000; Zhu et al. 2002; Szymanski and Hyse 2000). According to Kim, Kim and Lennon( 2006), convenience has a significant effect on customer satisfaction with the e‐Government experience and should not be ignored.

Finally, Content and Information is grounded on items previously associated with information quality in our study, but given the focus of the remaining items, it was felt that they reflected wider issues around the presence of information and content than is suggested by the term‘ information quality’. This stance is consistent with earlier work by Delone and McLean( 1992) who highlighted the importance of content and information to the user of e‐Government services and others who comment on the desirable features of web sites content( e. g. Bertot et al. 2008; Yoon et al. 2008). In addition, Halaris et al.( 2007) and Rowley( 2006) note that some studies include this as a criterion in their scales. Accordingly, we have viewed this dimension as an adaptation of the information quality dimension that has appeared in other models, and a re‐affirmation of the importance of information and content.

6. Conclusion and recommendations

This research has identified the dimensions of the user experience of e‐Government services and developed a measurement scale for evaluating user experience with e‐Government. Dimensions identified include: security and support, content and information, ease of use, benefits, barriers, convenience, trust and website quality. E‐Government providers can use the validated scale to measure and improve the user experience of e‐

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