Research on e-Government evaluation model based on the principal component analysis

Over the last few years, the area of electronic government (e-Government) has received increasing prominence and attention; people are interacting with e-Government systems to an ever greater extent. It is therefore important to measure the development of e-Government. Adopting principal component analysis (PCA), this study presents, validates and updates an evaluation model with 5 dimensions based on Socio-Technical model and Stakeholder Theory, which captures the multidimensional and interdependent nature of e-Government system. The validity of the model is empirically investigated using a sample of local e-Government of 18 cities in China, all of which have high Internet penetration and mature ICT use. The five dimensions of the evaluation model include project construction, information security management, special construction, transparency of government affairs and informationized ability. K-means clustering is applied in the subspace created by PCA to evaluate the local e-Government stages of growth of these 18 cities. The findings provide several important implications for e-Government research and practice.