Evaluating Usability of Web-Based Electronic Government: Users' Perspective

Electronic government (e-government) has been rapidly developed to increase services delivery and users' access to government information. Users' interaction with e-government is largely dependent upon how easy to use e-government websites. In this aspect, usability needs to be importantly addressed when developing e-government. As such, an empirical study is conducted to evaluate usability of current e-government websites focusing on users' perception and performance. The results indicate that a number of usability problems have been found in the target e-government websites. Furthermore, performance results show the different levels of users' interaction with the e-government websites evaluated. More significantly, a close relationship between users' perception of usability and their performance is indicated. These findings can help designers identify users' usability requirements and draw their particular attention to further develop more usable e-government websites.