What drives global e-government? An exploratory assessment of existing e-government performance measures

Introduction Perceived to be a technological solution for a better, more efficient and more effective government, e-government has been presented and implemented in nations around the world as one of the most compelling advances for government since the mid-1990s (OECD 2003). Many governments, including those at both the national and sub-national levels, have begun various e-government initiatives to develop and advance their online functions by providing public information and services to citizens and businesses and by interacting with citizens to obtain policy inputs (Demchak et al. 1998; Demchak et al. 2000; Welch and Wong 2001; Wong and Welch 2004). E-government has often been hailed as a means of promoting more effective intra- and intergovernmental relations (Ho 2002; Moon 2002). However, efforts to measure e-government performance have tended to out-distance the conceptual and theoretical work necessary to justify the measures and explain the results. So what is e-government performance? Recent work by Stowers (2004) proposes a multi-dimensional framework based on different levels of government performance: input measures, output measures, intermediate outcome measures and ultimate outcome measures. Input measures represent various resources used for e-government efforts to develop and maintain e-government applications. The input measures might be operationalized in terms of personnel and financial costs. Output measures reflect specific ‘immediate actions’ and visible indicators resulting from e-government initiatives such as the number of hits, completed downloads, number of e-mail requests and completed financial service/financial transactions.