A Pragmatic Framework of E-Governance Evaluation. Application and assessment of an e-governance evaluation framework in three Dutch public bodies

Abstract

The thesis focuses on presenting a pragmatic approach for e-governance evaluation by constructing a methodology built over two streams of literature i.e., e-governance and evaluation. Since the available literature on e-governance evaluation mostly examines approaches from a strictly e-governance perspective, the designed approach investigates the use of exploiting both streams of literature in designing an e-governance evaluation framework. The fundamental concepts from both streams of literature mutually contribute to build an e-governance evaluation framework. For example, e-government development models, e-governance dimensions, delivery models and e-governance evaluation modes are extracted from e-governance streams while evaluation processes and evaluation methods and techniques are adopted from the evaluation stream. An e-governance evaluation process, spanning over five phases: pre-evaluation development, manipulation, action, and outcome utilization, is presented. The use of evaluation-related literature in an e-governance evaluation framework enables a result-oriented and pragmatic approach. The additional outcome utilization phase in the e-governance evaluation process ensures that evaluation outcomes trigger the organizational learning process within government bodies and not dispensed for merely benchmarking.