Evaluation and distribution of e-government services

Initial findings are reported of a cost benefit evaluation of a set of e-government services offered at a large county in California. A very simple evaluation measure, payback period, was used, and the average payback period was less than one year. This is a striking result in and of itself but even more so considering that only readily quantifiable benefits accruing to the government agency were used in the evaluation, rather than both quantifiable and qualitative benefits both for the government agency and for the constituent users of the service. The inclusion of these factors would have made the end results even more telling. The average payback period value from this ongoing study was corroborated by an analysis of selected projects done at the state level across the United States. This would indicate that e-government services developed so far seem to be very cost effective, and it suggests that the scope of electronic services should be expanded. The findings of this study should not be immediately interpreted as indicating that there should be a policy change to make all services electronic. Since not all the public is capable of partaking of e-services, it is suggested that the development of such services be part of a broader channel strategy which considers electronic as well as other modes of delivery in providing services to the public.