A Systematic Literature Review of Empirical Research on the Impacts of e‐Government: A Public Value Perspective

• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Don MacLean,Ryad Titah
• Date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13413

Research Article

A Systematic Literature Review of Empirical Research on the Impacts of e-Government: A Public Value Perspective 23

Abstract: : While government organizations continue to invest in e-Government systems, there is still uncertainty as

to the benefits that can be generated. Without clear expectations, it will be impossible for managers to measure and

evaluate outcomes. This systematic literature review examines 60 empirical studies on the impacts of e-Government

published in the leading public administration and information systems journals. The impacts are classified using

public value theory, first, by the role for whom value is generated and, second, by the nature of the impact. The results

show that the most commonly studied impacts are productivity for the taxpayers and clients, client satisfaction and

service quality for clients, and improved trust and communications for citizens. There are many areas where limited

research has been conducted. We maintain that there is a complex network of immediate and indirect impacts that

must be considered by public managers in their analysis of potential investments.

Evidence for Practice

• Investments in e-Government can generate public value directly for the clients of the new systems and also

for two other groups of stakeholders: taxpayers interested in the effective use of government resources, and

citizens who have broader social objectives including developing trust, communications, and engagement

with government.

• e-Government systems can improve the productivity of clients and governments. Clients also benefit from

improved service quality and customer satisfaction.

• Investments in e-Government can develop organizational capabilities within the public agency, which may in

the future lead to transformation of the relationship between government and citizens.

For more than 20 years, governments around

the world have been making significant

investments of financial and human resources

to develop information systems (ISs) that would

make government information and services available

to clients through the Internet. These e-Government

systems were considered by many to be superior to

traditional channels for interactions between citizens

and governments. e-Government was expected to

improve the efficiency of government services. It

was also suggested that e-Government could lead to

a fundamental transformation in the relationship

between government and citizen (Norris 2010).

However, it is not clear what benefits have been

generated by e-Government (Goh and Arenas 2020;

Stanimirovic and Vintar 2013).

The attention of academic researchers has shifted

since the first articles on e-Government (Wirtz

and Daiser 2018). Initially, e-Government research

focused on the supply of e-Government systems,

and examining the design of these systems (Grimsley

and Meehan 2007) and the types of IS that could be

built (Hu, Lin, and Pan 2013; Nusir and Bell 2013).

This research led to the development of a variety

of measurement and rating systems to assess and

compare the maturity and quality of e-Government

(Lee 2010). A second stream examined the demand

for these systems. This research examined the factors

leading to the adoption and usage of e-Government

(Gupta, Singh, and Bhaskar 2016; Titah and

Barki 2006) and to the factors affecting the client’s

decision to use the e-Government rather than

traditional channels to access government services

(Madsen and Kræmmergaard 2015).

Underlying much of the academic and practitioner

activity was the implicit or explicit assumption that the

usage of e-Government would necessarily be beneficial

for both governments and their clients. It is far from

certain to what extent these expected benefits have

been achieved. The benefits from an IS will be realized

only to the extent it is used. Citizens do not interact

with governments very frequently (Heeks 2006) and

they show a clear preference for traditional channels

over the use of e-Government-enabled services

Don MacLean

Ryad Titah

HEC Montréal

A Systematic Literature Review of Empirical Research on the

Impacts of e-Government: A Public Value Perspective

Ryad Titah is an associate professor of

information systems at HEC Montréal.

His main research interests include

information technology acceptance and

its use and impact in both public and

private organizations. His work has been

published in journals such as

Computers

in Human Behavior

,

Government

Information Quarterly

,

Information

Systems Research

,

Information Technology

and People

,

International Journal of

Electronic Government Research

,

Journal

of Management Information Systems

,

The

Journal of the Association for Information

Systems

,

The Journal of the Operational

Research Society

, and

MIS Quarterly

.

His research has won several awards

including a “Best IS Publication of the

Year Award” granted by the International

Conference of Information Systems (ICIS

2007) and its Senior Scholars, a “Highly

Commended Paper Award” granted by

the Emerald Literati Network Awards of

Excellence 2007, and the ACM SIGMIS Best

dissertation award 2011. He is a past Senior

Editor at

Organization Studies

and past

Associate Editor at the

European Journal

of Information Systems

. He is also past

president of the Administrative Sciences

Association of Canada (ASAC).

Email: ryad.titah@hec.ca

Don MacLean is a doctoral candidate

in information systems at HEC Montréal.

He has worked for over 25 years as an

information systems practitioner for the

government of Canada. His research

interests include the management of

information systems in public organizations,

information technology management

expertise, and IT service management.

Email: donald.maclean@hec.ca

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 1, pp. 23–38. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13413.

24 Public Administration Review • January | Fe bruary 20 22

(Reddick and Turner 2012; Rey-Moreno, Medina-Molina, and

Barrera-Barrera 2018). Andersen et al. (2010) provided the first

systematic literature review to categorize the empirically observed

impacts of e-Government. They found evidence of a variety of effects

to capabilities, interactions, orientations, and value distributions.

More recently, Twizeyimana and Andersson (2019) have identified a

wide range of impacts grouped into broad, sometimes overlapping,

categories.

There are empirical and theoretical reasons to again examine the

observed effects of e-Government. Empirically, e-Government

ISs have continued to evolve and improve as governments learn

through trial and error. The impacts of transformative technologies

can be difficult to recognize, as they may appear in ways that are

beyond the scope of the traditional services (Panagiotopoulos,

Klievink, and Cordella 2019). Disruptive technologies can have

positive and negative impacts (Valle-Cruz 2019). The impacts of

IS, particularly second- and third-order impacts, can take time to

emerge (Agarwal and Lucas Jr 2005). From a theoretical perspective,

there is a greater understanding of the complexity of impacts of

government action. e-Government can directly affect those who

use the services and indirectly others who do not. Individuals may

perceive impacts in different ways owing to differences in group

membership and position in hierarchies (Cook and Harrison 2015).

Different groups may have conflicting or competing interests (Goh

and Arenas 2020). Lastly, e-Government research has had more

time to mature, which ought to have resulted in more research

being published in the influential, leading academic journals. The

research question motivating this research is What is the current state

of knowledge regarding the impacts of development, adoption, and usage

of e-Government and what are the antecedents of these impacts?

This article describes the results of our systematic literature review

into the impacts of e-Government. Our review examined empirical

research of 60 articles published in the leading journals in ISs and

public administration (PA). We used the public value theory lens

for examining prior research. Public value theory suggests evaluation

of public managers based on how their activities contribute to the

range of outcomes that are valued by the public (Moore 1995).

We use public value to understand impacts from the perspective

of the various roles that the public plays in their interactions with

governments. Our review extends prior e-Government research by

classifying both impacts and recipients. We also classify specific

antecedent factors related to these impacts. Our results show that

prior research on the impacts of e-Government has concentrated

on two relationships. The most frequently examined is the positive

effect characteristics of the e-Government system and its usage on

the productivity of the client and the government organization. The

second relationship is between system and usage characteristics and

the relationship between citizens and government. This research also

identifies other areas that are under-researched.

Our article makes three contributions. Our first contribution

advances the study of e-Government with a more solid theoretical

grounding. Our taxonomy identifies the potential impacts for each

of three roles people play in their relationships with governments:

citizen, client, and taxpayer. We also identify gaps in research into

impacts, particularly gaps in confirmatory quantitative research.

Our second contribution is to public value research, as there is still

a lack of theoretical clarity on what public value means and how

IT can contribute to creation of public value (Panagiotopoulos,

Klievink, and Cordella 2019). We describe how e-Government has

the potential to generate multiple forms of public value for different

categories of public. We also use public value concepts to describe a

stream of research that crosses multiple academic domains. Finally,

our synthesis of past academic research contributes to evidence-

based practice, allowing practitioners to learn from the experiences

of others (Linders, Liao, and Wang 2018). Managers can be effective

at generating value from their services only if they understand which

groups are potentially impacted by e-Government services and the

range of potential impacts they may experience (Pedersen 2017).

The rest of the article is organized into five sections. The next

section provides the theoretical grounding to the literature review

by describing both e-Government and public value theory. We

then describe the methods used to conduct our literature review.

The results of our synthesis of past e-Government research is then

presented. We end with a discussion of the implications of our

findings for research and practice and suggest avenues for future

research.

Theory

The aim of our systematic literature review is to synthesize research

on the impacts of e-Government. In this section, we describe public

value theory, which provides the theoretical lens with which to

synthesize prior research on the impacts of e-Government. We then

provide a definition of e-Government and describe prior literature

reviews of the impacts of e-Government.

Public Value

Public value theory provides an approach to analyze the actions

of public officials and organizations. It is analogous to private

value as the objective of managers in the private sector and

recognizes the potential for a broad range of impacts resulting

from the activities of government (Moore 1995). Public value,

the assessment “of what is created an sustained by government on

behalf of the public” (Nabatchi 2017, 60), is distinct from public

values, the norms and principles that ought to guide PA, which

typically include managerial values of transparency, accountability,

efficiency, and democratic values of equality, openness, and fairness

(Panagiotopoulos, Klievink, and Cordella 2019). Here, we are

interested in the creation of public value, which is understood

as “the combined view of the public about what they regard as

valuable” (Talbot 2011, 28). Managers are encouraged to consider

the objectives and interests of the citizens, as value creation is

decentralized, unplanned, and co-produced with those outside of

the organization (Cordella and Paletti 2018). Using public value

theory shifts the focus from the producers of government services to

the consumers; the core question for managers changes from how

to better deliver services to how to satisfy citizens through delivery

of services that are both efficient and effective (Panagiotopoulos,

Klievink, and Cordella 2019).

Public value theory is an appropriate lens with which to examine

e-Government. Other models have been developed to explain

the impact of public technology, including Fountain’s (2001)

technology enactment framework, Heeks and Bailur’s (2007)

framework on perspectives of impacts and causes, and Corradini