Measuring eGovernment success: a public value approach

Measuring the success of eGovernment systems depends on how citizens perceive their value. Our understanding of success has been hampered however by (i) the rapid development and complexity of Internet technologies and (ii) the lack of conceptual bases necessary to represent the ever expanding range of success dimensions. This study proposes Public Value theory to reposition the DeLone and McLean IS Success Model in order to encompass three essential success or value clusters: efficiency, effectiveness and social value. The efficacy of this approach is demonstrated by creating a Public Value‐based (Net Benefits) construct to measure IS success from the citizens' perspective within the context of eGovernment 2.0 systems. Survey responses from 347 experienced users of U.S. government Web 2.0 websites confirm that the proposed success measure is reliable and valid and that the nine‐factor structure (Cost, Time, Convenience, Personalisation, Communication, Ease of Information Retrieval, Trust, Well‐Informedness and Participate in Decision‐Making) can explain a major portion of citizens' perceptions of eGovernment success. Additionally, the nine‐factor Public Value construct was applied to three identified eGovernment user groups: Passive, Active and Participatory, in order to better understand success in specific usage contexts, including Web 2.0.