Impact assessment of e-government: An empirical study of measuring the public value created through e-initiatives

The contribution of e-government investments for countries to the assurance of economic growth, better public administration and sustainable development are very well studied in the literature. Also, many researchers emphasized its potential for widening participation of citizens in policy-making process, enhancing access to information and removing barriers to public service. However, there seems to be an imbalance between the supply and demand of public e-services in most countries despite the extensive investments in e-government so far, which might be considered as a consequence of inappropriate ways of policy development rather than "evidence based" evaluation and selection of e-government policies. It is, therefore, important to pay greater attention to collect and interpret a variety of empirical evidence in order to assess impacts of e-government policies. Previous literature has shown that there is a strong need for measuring the performance of e-government and acquiring empirical evidence on the impacts and outcomes of it especially in developing countries. Moreover, empirical evidence is little regarding the assessment of e-government impact from a public value perspective particularly in Turkish literature. Therefore, the aim of this study is to measure the public value of e-government initiatives in Turkey. In order to fulfill this aim empirical data were collected from e-government users across Turkey through survey questionnaire employing a quantitaive approach. Once the data were collected then they were transformed into SPSS and analyzed by running descriptive statistics. Analysis of empirical findings showed that Quality of services and Functionalities of services tend to create public value through contributing to Delivery of Public Services. Similarly, User orientedness of services, Organizational efficiency and Openness of public organisations tend to create public value through contributing to Effectiveness of Public Organizations. Finally, Self development of citizens, Trust and Environmental sustainability tend to create public value through contributing to Achievement of Social Outcomes while Equity only tends not to create public value.