Evaluating E-Government: A Lesson From Korea

Abstract

After several years of building e-government in Korea, some scholars and practitioners of public administration have expressed concerns about the policy direction of building an e-government. A major point in their concerns is that we need to understand that, managing e-government is as important as building it. Under the circumstances, the notion of evaluation naturally arose and quickly took its place in policy makers’ minds. It has been only a few years since systematic evaluations have been developed and applied to real evaluations. Although there are many critical issues related to evaluating more effectively and successfully, this study addresses how to utilize the results of the evaluation. Unless the findings are utilized to correct problems in the process of building an e-government, policy makers will not know whether they are on the right track in implementing programs and policies. To this end, this study examines the current state of e-government evaluation in Korea and to what uses the evaluation results are put in building an effective e-government. This study also offers a set of suggestions to improve the use of the evaluation in the decision-making process. In so doing, it examines three major theoretical explanations for evaluation utilization and discusses several real problems related to utilizing results of evaluations.