Juan Carlos Barahona and Andrey Elizondo
innovate. Paradoxically, for most public officials, there are counter‐incentives to innovation, making it especially hard for them to lead change.
Throughout the world major investments have been made to increase government presence in digital media( Henman 2013). The magnitude of these investments, together with their operational impacts, create a need to quantify and measure these efforts consistently and rigorously( Kunstelj and Vintar 2004)( Vaclav, et al. 2006). More importantly, the digital connection between a government and a country’ s citizenry is based on regular interaction of those citizens with governmental digital platforms or websites( Ifinedo 2012) and is reinforced to the extent that public services can be provided using a variety of digital devices to meet growing user demands( Holzer and Kim 2003)( Tolbert and Mossberger 2006)( Dutton and Jeffreys 2010). Even though it can be argued that the electronic component is just one piece of a complex process of change, these interactions are crucial. Therefore, their evolution must be scrutinized, and feedback and recognition of decisions become important factors in a government’ s transition toward being an effective service provider in today’ s new interconnected society( Andersen 2006)( Ambali 2010)( Aman and Kasimin 2011).
An assessment of how e‐Government has advanced has been used as a means to promote its development. Different assessment models have been proposed and implemented during the past decade. Many were based on maturity models and shared similar shortcomings, while a few evolved to focus on the provision of e‐ services through government portals. All of them have provided aggregate measurements at the country and regional levels, while a few have done so at the local level.
We developed an index and a user‐centered assessment aimed at serving as a proxy for e‐Government development, while directly promoting collaboration in the form of knowledge‐sharing and involvement of high‐level decision‐makers, who are critical to the advancement of any major technological innovation. This methodology has many practical and significant implications for IT use in government operations and the future quality of e‐Government developments. From 2006‐2009 this methodology was tested in Costa Rica and adopted by its government. Since then, three nation‐wide evaluations of the methodology have been conducted by an independent, international academic institution.
Using three years of panel data and a supplementary cross‐sectional study, this paper reviews the proposed index and its implementation, validates its initial claims, explores lessons learned and discusses real and potential challenges to future monitoring of public service provision by digital means.
2. Evaluating the progress of e‐Government
Literature shows a tendency to classify progress in e‐Government through the use of the Gartner stages model( Gartner Group 2000). This model describes a set of four or five stages in e‐Government evolution or development, with variations depending on the author. A set of criteria is ascribed to these stages for diagnosing the“ e‐Government maturity” level reached by a government, whether national or local( Laynea and Leeb 2001)( Henman 2013).
There is extensive debate on the practical value of digital government stages and the different instruments – indices, tools and benchmarks – that have been created for international comparison purposes( Henman 2013)( Peters, Janssen and Engers 2004). The discussion derives from the fact that knowledge about these stages or indices provides very limited or useless information to policy‐makers; moreover, because of their design, most existing indices are difficult for public officials leading efforts in the development of e‐services to replicate, interpret and use directly.
Given the variety of instruments, models and frameworks( UN 2012)( Kunstelj and Vintar 2004)( OECD, Dubai School of Government 2007)( Fitsilis, Anthopoulos and Gerogiannis 2009)( Iribarren, et al. 2008)( Mundy and Musa 2010)( Stanimirovic, Leben and Jukic 2011)( Ifinedo 2012), literature suggests that there is still no“ golden rule” on how to prioritize or create profitable or successful projects, or on where nations should invest their resources for effective e‐Government progress.
Given the role that websites play as the digital connection between governments and citizens, several methodologies have been developed to measure the progress of e‐Government by evaluating government portals( Barahona, Zuleta and Calderón, Marco conceptual y herramienta para la evaluación de la calidad de la
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