E-Govern Evaluation Using the Whole-of-Systems Approach

Abstract

Evaluating e-government is a difficult and costly activity. On the one hand the evaluation of egovernmentis difficult because it is not always clear what should be evaluated. Actually, it is quitedifferent to evaluate the efficiency of a single e-government service, the benefits that derive fromthe implementation of an e-government project, the effectiveness of a programme for the spreadingof e-government or the outcomes of an e-government policy. On the other hand, the evaluation of egovernmentis costly because it requires performing some specific activities that add further costs tothe costs for implementing and operating ICT systems and applications. In this paper, we argue thata whole-of-system approach to evaluation, based on the use of secondary data sources, can helpreducing both the complexity and the cost related to the ex-post evaluation of e-governmentinitiatives. A whole-of-system approach considers how an e-government initiative contributes to theachievement of global society objectives and to the delivery of public value to citizens. Moreover,by simultaneously considering the different interests involved, a whole-of-system approach allowsfor a better evaluation of the distribution of the benefits that possibly derive from an e-governmentinitiative.The use of secondary data sources sensibly reduces the costs for the evaluation of an egovernmentinitiative since it can take advantage of data already available. Moreover, besidesreducing the costs for data collection, the use of secondary data sources provides some furtheradvantages as well, such as easy reproducibility, ability to generalize the results arising from largerdatasets, reliability of the data deriving from their having been compiled by trustworthyorganizations.We discuss what a whole-of-system approach to the evaluation of e-governmentamounts to and argue that a public value evaluation must be performed at the system level. Thisapproach will be exemplified with respect to the evaluation of the impacts of an e-governmentinitiative at the country level, based on the use of secondary data sources.