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Top1. Introduction
With the approach of globalization, marketization and network society, driven by the emerging information technology, countries around the world take positive measures to promote the digital transformation of government (Janowski, 2015, 2016; Ku, Gil-Garcia, & Zhang 2016). The act of applying information technology to implement e-government in government management has raised many countries’ concern. The public values perspective of e-government can be seen as government's use of ICTs to increase the delivery of services that the public want (UNDESA, 2016). The government website’s construction is one of the e-government’s important contents and forms. The government website is a significant tool to improve local governments’ administrative efficiency, ameliorate public services, and strengthen the interaction between government and private organization. Website is served as the first point for those who seek information (Rakhmawati, Ferlyando, & Samopa, 2017). As the traditional government management needs performance evaluation, the local government is also facing how to evaluate the government website performance objectively and effectively. After a lot of manpower and material resources were invested in government websites construction, governments need the scientific analysis results from performance evaluation to guide the improvement and development of government websites.
From 2001 to 2018, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations evaluates the e-government development of all member states every year. In 2012, the US government announced the implementation of a digital government strategy. The American Digital Service Innovation Center has developed a generic indicator system for performance evaluation of government websites. The EU's government website performance assessment is based on 20 basic public services provided for citizens and businesses. Since 2001, the China Software Testing Center under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has conducted performance evaluations of Chinese ministries and local government portals every year. The World Market Research Center at Brown University in the United States has evaluated 2,288 government websites in 196 countries and regions. In addition, Peking University Network Economy Research Center, Accenture Consulting, Singapore Nanyang Technological University, etc. have evaluated the government website or published the relevant government website service indicator system.
In addition to the performance evaluation of government websites in practice, many scholars have studied the performance evaluation of government websites in theory. At present, the research scope of website performance evaluation at home and abroad has gradually developed from the level of theory and qualitative research to the level of empirical and quantitative research. Some influential research results have been obtained.