Local Government Performance, Cost‐Effectiveness, and Use of the Web: An Empirical Analysis

Tom Nicholls

doi:10.1002/poi3.209

Abstract

This article empirically assesses the relationship between government use of the web, service performance, and cost‐effectiveness. It tests and challenges the assumption, prevalent in government thinking and in the Digital Era Governance (DEG) quasi‐paradigm, that the delivery of web‐based public services is associated with better outcomes. English local government is used as a test case, for which (uniquely) good‐quality full‐population time‐series data for council performance, cost, and web quality are available. A new panel data set is constructed covering 2002–2008, allowing the actual relationship between web performance and council cost and quality to be estimated using dynamic regression models which control for both general changes over time and the time‐invariant differences between councils. Consistent growth is shown in the scope and quality of local government web provision. Despite this, and governmental enthusiasm for bringing services online, no association is found between web development and performance, or cost‐effectiveness. The article concludes that governments’ enthusiasm for citizen‐facing digital government is not supported by this empirical data, and that a skeptical view is warranted of DEG's advocacy of digitalization as a core focus for service improvement.

Highlights

Since the beginning of the web, there has been a great deal of enthusiasm about the possibilities for digital government,1 using the Internet as a tool for improving public service performance
There is a substantial, and significant, positive relationship between service performance at period t − 1 and that at period t, but no association with the primary variable. This is a surprising result, given the prominence of the e‐government effort in local government over this period, and the high sensitivity of panel models for detecting such an effect if it were present. This model thereby provides no evidence that web engagement measured using the Better Connected (BC) data series is associated with higher council performance
There is insufficient evidence here to support H1, and we must fail to reject the null hypothesis that Internet engagement is not associated with service performance

Summary

Introduction

Since the beginning of the web, there has been a great deal of enthusiasm about the possibilities for digital government, using the Internet as a tool for improving public service performance. From the late 1990s onwards, governments have extensively touted the benefits of, and encouraged spending on, government on the web programs at local and national level Such enthusiasms are reflected worldwide, with digital hubs such as the United States Digital Service, 18F, the Australian Digital Transformation Agency, and Britain’s Government Digital Service seen as a key driver of cheaper and better twenty‐first century government. One prominent recent quasi‐paradigm advocating these approaches has been Digital Era Governance (DEG) (Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, & Tinkler, 2006) and its follow ups, which propose a digital‐centric model of twenty‐first century public administration. It is, much easier to spend money on ICTs than it is to demonstrate that money was well‐spent and returned the benefits expected. There has been an assumption amongst policymakers that use of the Internet to deliver public services will make an impact. This assumption underpins a burgeoning industry of companies delivering online service systems to government, and policy discussions not about whether investment in the web is desirable, but about the fastest and most powerful ways of doing it

Methods

Results

Conclusion