Developing a Conceptual Framework to Evaluate e-Government Portals' Success

Many governments around the world have invested heavily into the e-government systems. They have been making significant efforts to provide information and services online. However, previous research shows that countries are varied in the rate of adoption and success of e-government systems. Some countries stand in better positions than the others in terms of success that is defined in this research as individual's level of use, satisfaction, and their perceived net benefits. In fact, drawing a clear picture of how and why individuals use e-government portals is the way to know the factors that lead to their success. A review of the literature shows that much of the research on e-government in developing courtiers focuses on the issues of the acceptance and the adoption of this emerging technology by individuals. Also, with the limited reported studies on e-government systems success, most of these studies focus on certain specific issues (e.g. trust) rather than looking at further global and contextual factors which will lead to success. It is difficult to make a judgment regarding what findings and results exist in the literature of Information Systems (IS) success or its applications that are applicable to fully understand e-government portal's success. Therefore, this paper proposes a conceptual framework which uses different theories/models for evaluating e-government portals' success from individual's point of views. The proposed framework will be tested in a future study in the context of e-government portals in Saudi Arabia. This framework integrates the updated DeLone and McLean IS success model, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), self-efficacy theory and perceived risk. Also, culture issues have been taken into consideration by using personal values theory introduced by Schwartz (Schwartz 1992). The framework consists of thirteen constructs including: system quality, information quality, service quality, perceived risk, self-efficacy, personal values, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude towards using, behavior intention to use, use, user satisfaction, and perceived net benefit.