Ibrahim Alfadli and Malcolm Munro
information available on‐line, one way interaction, two way interaction, and full online transaction including delivery and payment. It distinguishes different kinds of e‐Government approaches that can be used to assess the development of e‐Government from different perspectives. In addition; it claims that the correct assessment of e‐Government should concentrate on four domains of e‐Government: e‐Services, e‐ Management, e‐Democracy and e‐Commerce. Therefore; it could be argued that none of these approaches can stand alone as an assessment method to assess specific e‐Government because each assessment method is subjective and can lead to different results. As a result, combination of different frameworks will lead to more accurate assessment results. Studies by( Gupta and Jana 2003) have shown the importance of e‐ Government and how it will lead to better governance. It also describes e‐Government stakeholders and how they interact with each other. Furthermore, the research indicates there are some factors that play a major role in the success of e‐Government such as Government, People, Policies, and Technology. However, to make all of these factors work toward successful e‐Government the importance of evaluating the efficiency of e‐ Government should not be forgotten. The proposed evaluation framework made by Gupta and Jana categorized the following types of measures:
• Hard measures: includes Cost benefit, Benchmarks
• Soft measures: includes Scoring methods, Stages of e‐Government
• Hierarchy of measures: includes Return on investment, Total cost and revenues, Improvement in quality of planning and control, Quality of decision, Value of information and System characteristics. As a result, it could be argued that the case study used the proposed evaluation framework in India and therefore some of the measures might not be suitable if applied in other countries. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis is a subjective analysis and this might lead to different results from one person to another.
Previous studies have reported that the US government is using different methods to find out whether or not citizens are getting what they need from e‐Government( Cook 2000). In our opinion, changes can be made to the framework in order to adopt this evaluation in other countries, as well as mixing different kind of measures to get more accurate results. In addition, a closer look at the framework from a different perspective by regrouping of measures might be needed; as some of the measures are hard to actually measure. Some researchers classified e‐Government evaluation indicators in different forms such as social, economic and technical issues.( Alshawi and Alalwany 2009) defines the following types of challenges in e‐Government evaluation:
• General needs of target group of people
• Identifying and quantifying benefits
• Considering social and technical use
Alshawi and Alalwany proposed framework is based on three factors( Technical issues, Economic issues and Social) issues, where Technical issues are measured by performance and accessibility, Economic issues are measured by cost saving, and Social issues are measured by openness, trust and ease of use. Perhaps the most serious disadvantage of this framework, despite the fact that it is clear and straight forward, is that it is hard to evaluate in a real environment due to the differences that might happened if different people used the same framework against a specific organization or services. Several attempts have been made to evaluate an e‐ Government by using the EGOVSAT model( Structural Equation Model) to evaluate user’ s satisfaction. This model focus on eleven measures which have three constructs( utility, efficiency, and customization) and affect four emotional dimensions( confidence, pleasantness, frustration, satisfaction)( Horan and Abhichandani 2006). A web survey has been conducted using the EGOVSAT model to gather data from users as a first stage from two states in the USA. The second stage, after gathering all the data is to conduct several focus groups meeting. Several studies investigating e‐Government evaluation have been carried out. An example of these studies is reported by the Dubai School of Government in which they used OECD countries as best practice examples to develop an evaluation model.( DOC N3 2007) The study is based on different members of OECD countries such as Italy, The Netherlands, Australia, United Kingdom and Canada. Moreover, the emphasis is on e‐Government evaluation obstacles in these countries and how to overcome them. Some examples of these obstacles are:
• Lack of clarity of objectives
• Hard to define success
• Private sector tools may not work for governments
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