E-government transformation success An assessment methodology and the preliminary results

Purpose - This study is an updated and enhanced version of the study named "Building a methodology to assess the e-government transformation success" presented by Iskender and Ozkan in the 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2012). The main purpose of this study is to explain the development of the methodology presented in the previous study in detail, but as an add-on to the previous one, it also applies the developed methodology on the real data collected from Turkish public institutions to show the practical implementation of it and to evaluate the preliminary results. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology explained in this study is designed to collect quantitative data to assess the relationship between the success level of e-government transformation in Turkish public institutions (dependent variable) and the probable factors (independent variables) which might be effective on this success. The dependent variable is formed by using the framework of IS Success Model created by DeLone and McLean (D&M IS Success Model), while the independent variables are gathered from literature by analyzing 100 studies focusing on probable success factors. Findings - The major output of this study is a common methodology designed to collect and analyze the data of different stakeholder groups in e-government transformation, but the practical implementation shows that the independent variables gathered from the literature as the probable causes of the success in e-government transformation are not really the causes of this success, although they are positively correlated to it. In addition to this, trying to evaluate the effect of each single independent variable on the dependent variable separately is not a logical way, as some of these variables are subject to reciprocal suppression with the other ones. Research limitations/implications - Although the developed methodology is a generic one, the practical implementation of it in this study only uses the data of Turkish public institutions. Practical implications - Since the methodology is a generic one, it might be used by the other interested researchers to do similar or alternative analyses with the same or different sample groups. Social implications - Understanding the relationship between the e-government transformation success and the probable success factors better might be helpful to develop better policies focusing on the social, legal, technical and economic dimensions of the subject more properly. Originality/value - Apart from the similar studies in the literature, the methodology developed in this study provides a way for the researchers who want to collect comparable quantitative data not only from external stakeholders (citizens who use e-government services) but also from internal stakeholders (government officials who provide these services and benefit from them in the internal processes of the public institutions).