Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-end of E-Government: A Participative Self-assessment Approach

Measuring e-government has traditionally been focused on measuring and benchmarking websites and their use. This provides useful information from a user-perspective, but does not provide any information how well the back-end of e-government is organized and what can be learnt from others. In this paper a self-assessment instrument for organizational and technology infrastructure aspects is developed and tested. This model has been used to benchmark 15 initiates in the Netherlands in a group session. This helped them to identify opportunities for improvement and to share their experiences and practices. The benchmark results shows that only a disappointingly few investigated back-ends (20%) fall in the highest quadrant. Measuring the back-end should capture both organizational and technical elements. A crucial element for gaining in-depth insight with limited resources is the utilizing of a participative, self-assessment approach. Such an approach ensures an emphasis on learning, avoids the adverse aspects of benchmarking and dispute over the outcomes.