Measuring for Knowledge: A Data-Driven Research Approach for eGovernment

EGovernment still faces many challenges as it continues to develop. The current status of electronic services delivery opens up a lot of questions, both for practitioners and researchers. Therefore, further progress of eGovernment needs a profound knowledge base. EGovernment policy has focused several years on bringing online public services and on benchmarking their availability and sophistication. Simultaneously, eGovernment measurement activities are often based on the so-called supply-side benchmarking. This is important knowledge, however, it is under criticism because it lacks a user-centric viewpoint of eGovernment development. In this paper a bottom-up and data-driven approach is presented how research could help to manage (user-centric) eGovernment strategies. Based on statistical testing (techniques of Structural Equation Modeling, SEM) of large sample data from the Belgian government, we have investigated which relations do exist between contextual variables and the availability and/or satisfaction of electronic public services. This paper presents an illustration of this data-driven approach and explains how this can support and enrich the management and evaluation of eGovernment policy.