A validation of the modified democratic e-governance website evaluation model

The recent global pandemic has highlighted the importance of efficient communication between the government and its citizens through online platforms. While approximately 90% of governments around the world have opened up their websites to provide government information and public services, many have been criticized for their quality issues. The unsatisfactory upkeep of government websites may be due to the lack of adequate guidelines and evaluation tools for public managers, which would enable them to achieve the superior goals of e government initiatives. We posit that evaluating government websites should be done with a formative and theory-based approach instead of summative or conclusion-based ones, as a government website is a long-term mechanism to achieve the objectives of e-government programs. Accordingly, this study empirically tests the Democratic E-governance Website Evaluation Model (DEWEM) that was conceptually created by Lee-Geiller and Lee (2019). Through a series of measurement development procedures, the results present a more concise, refined and validated model consisting of 25 items under 5 factors, whose associations to the outcome of democratic e-governance were statistically significant. The validated DEWEM also shows significant correlations with citizens' satisfaction and intention to use the website. This study advances the body of evaluation research for government websites and provides public managers with credible and useful guidelines for improving their websites.