Measuring digital government service performance: Evidence from China

Abstract

Digital services of the public sector are regarded as one of the most crucial aspects of the administrative system's reform. However, empirical studies on digital services are insufficient, especially for service performance evaluation. This paper establishes a conceptual framework to model service performance with quantity and quality output measures. Based on the panel data of Chinese cities from 2017 to 2020, we employ a one-step stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to estimate the city's digital government service efficiency (DGSE) and examine its drivers. The findings suggest that the proposed analytical framework is applicable to the public sector performance measurement when quantitative and qualitative outputs are considered. Second, Chinese cities' DGSE levels ranged from 0.149 to 0.999, with a mean of 0.798. The DGSE score also shows significant spatio-temporal heterogeneity, with the eastern area performing best, followed by the middle and western regions, and the northeastern region performing the worst. Further, exogenous factors such as fiscal decentralization, public-private partnership, urban scale, the mayor's ability, and policy intervention substantially affect the DGSE level. The results have significant policy implications for governments' digital transition in the ongoing global digital era.