Evaluating public administration e-portals

Abstract

Electronic administration portals have become the basic platform for electronic administrative services for users (citizens and businesses). The quality and user-friendliness of this supply depends to a large extent on how well planned and developed it is. The first part of the paper presents some of the more notable approaches to measuring the development or sophistication of e-services and administrative e-portals. Part two presents a methodology for evaluating e-portals developed at the Faculty of Administration – its strength lies primarily in its attempt to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of life-event portals. It measures the level of sophistication, coverage, coordination and accessibility of a service and combines these into an overall portal score. The paper closes by presenting empirical results from the application of the methodology to assess 12 administrative portals from around the world.