This is the extent to which a user may interact with a service function via a Web site. This may range from nonexistent through information display, information download, partial executability (in which a user may submit digital material but not receive responses), and fully executable in which mutual citizen-agency interaction takes place with a validation of the transaction provided.
Published in Chapter:
Evaluation of E-Government Web Sites
Michael Middleton (Queensland University of Technology, Faculty of Information Technology, Australia)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 12
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-857-4.ch063
Abstract
In recent times, the popularity of the Internet has led to e-government practices being widely recognized as an important option for service to the general public. In response, various tiers of government from national to local level have sought opportunities to engage the public through Web sites. Many governments now provide some level of access to government through Web interfaces, for example, through access to resources such as publications and government data. In some cases there are services provided that may be executed online. For example, users may provide personal information for licensing or to undertake payments. There continues to be a diversity of implementation quality and levels for such services. The facilitation of e-government has been characterized in various ways. For example, the European Union has seen it in terms of four main tasks: the development of Internet-based services to improve access to public information and services, the improvement of the transparency of public administration by using the Internet, the full exploitation of information technology within public administration, and the establishment of e-procurement (Strejcek & Theilb, 2003). More recently, the United Nations (UN), noting that ICTs may be used to transform its internal and external relationships, has also identified four similar but distinct areas: internal processes such as record keeping, electronic service delivery, virtual communities for digital democracy, and e-business opportunities such as procurement (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2005).