1. The three major values proposed in the public value based e-governance framework constructed, are as follows:
(1) Operational Values: Includes the two dimensions of efficiency and user-oriented service. Efficiency can be further divided into four indicators: cost reduction, IT enhancement, risk reduction and process reengineering. User-oriented service is divided into two indicators: e-service satisfaction, and increased e-service.
(2) Political Values: Includes the three dimensions of transparency and accountability, citizen participation, and accessibility equity. Transparency and accountability is further divided into four indicators: political transparency, administrative transparency, administrative accountability and open data.
Citizen participation is divided into three indicators:
e-participation in public affairs, willingness to use e-government services and e-political efficacy. Accessibility equity is divided into three indicators: language accessibility, user accessibility and regional accessibility.
(3) Social Values: Includes the four dimensions of trust, self-development, quality of life, and environmental
sustainability. Trust is further divided into four indicators:
political trust, social trust, trust on the internet and trust in e-government. Self-development is divided into three indicators:
education and learning, economic development, and employment opportunities. Quality of life is divided into four indicators: recreation and entertainment, online and offline interpersonal relations, health, and life satisfaction.
Environmental sustainability is divided into two i ndicators:
“energy conservation, resource sharing and pollution reduction”
and “promotion of community carbon reduction practices”.
2. This research utilizes the public value based e -governance framework to design the AHP expert opinion questionnaire.
Twenty experts from the government, the academia and the private industry are invited to complete the survey. The results are as follows:
(1) Most experts indicate that, in order from most to least important, three major public values are: political values, social v alues and operational values.
(2) Most experts indicate that the five most important e -governance public value dimensions are, in order of decreasing importance:
transparency and accountability, user -oriented service, efficiency, accessibility equity, and cit izen participation. While the five most important indicators are, in order of decreasing importance: e-service satisfaction, political transparency, regional accessibility, e-participation in public affairs, and health.
(3) A closer analysis of the opinions between different groups of experts reveals that, in order of decreasing importance, the three major public values to the academic experts are: social
values, operational values, and political values. To the experts of the government and private industry, i n order of decreasing importance, the three major public values are: political values, social values, and operational values.
(4) Within political values, both academics and practitioners indicate unanimously that the most important dimensions are transparency and accountability.
(5) Within social values, the two dimensions assigned with the highest weights are trust and quality of life. Nevertheless, the order of importance assigned to the various dimensions is relatively different between academics and practiti oners. The order of importance assigned by practitioners, from highest to lowest is: quality of life, trust, environmental sustainability, and self-development. The order of importance assigned by academics, from highest to lowest is: trust, self -development, quality of life, and environmental development.
(6) Within operational values, the weights assigned by experts to the two dimensions of user-oriented service and efficiency, do not differ significantly. However, academics tend to assign greater importance to user-oriented service, while practitioners tend to favor efficiency over user-oriented service. This difference might result from practitioners’ traditional tendency of holding efficiency and profit-first oriented values.
3. This research conducts a comparative analysis of the current public value based e-governance development with the United States of America (U.S.A.), United Kingdom (U.K.) and Singapore. The results are as follows:
(1) In terms of political values, policies to implement transparency and accountability, citizen participation, accessibility equity,
are all in place for the U.S.A., U.K. and Singapore.
(2) In terms of social values, Singapore is way ahead of both the U.S.A. and U.K.
(3) In terms of operational values, all three nations have, in regar d to the efficiency dimension, proposed various policies to strengthen e-governance efficiency. Regarding to the user-oriented service dimension, the U.K. has placed special emphasis on the increase of e-service items.
(4) In general, all three nations’ futur e developmental strategies are geared toward the promotion of government cloud computing technologies. This would allow government agencies to obtain information from faster and more secure means. The utilization interdepartmental information exchange plat forms would also foster public employees’ communication abilities, knowledge sharing, and usage of e-government information and resources.
4. This research collects and establishes objective indicators:
(1) Eight different international evaluation reports are re ferenced in the creation of the objective indicators in this research. In the end, eight indicators from six international evaluation reports are used. The indicators are taken from: ITU (2011, 2012), UN (2012), UN-Municipal (2012), WEF (2012), and Brown University (2008). In general, only a small percentage of international objective indicators are used, this is mainly due to their unsuitability in measuring a national status regarding to public value based e-governance. Most measures are primarily concerned with the construction of e-infrastructure, and thus, differs significantly from the public values that e -governance pursues.
(2) The eight international indicators eventually used are:
A. Public procurement of IT: classified under the IT enhancement indicator, under the efficiency dimension, within operational values.
B. E-information: classified under the political transparency indicator, under the transparency and accountability dimension, within political values.
C. Official database: classified under the open da ta indicator, under the transparency and accountability dimension, within political values.
D. Access in more than one language: classified under the language accessibility indicator, under the accessibility equity dimension, within political values.
E. Disability access for the blind: classified under the user accessibility indicator, under the accessibility equity dimension, within political values.
F. Disability access for the deaf: classified under the user accessibility indicator, under the accessibility equity dimension, within political values.
G. Disability Access: classified under the user accessibility indicator, under the accessibility equity dimension, within political values.
H. Usage of virtual social networks: classified under the online and offline interpersonal relations indicator, under the quality of life dimension, within social values.
(3) Domestic objective indicators are also referenced. This research hopes to offset the insufficiency of international indicators, by developing a new set of indicators, including from domestic and international evaluation reports, to evaluate Taiwan’s current e-governance status based on public values.
5. Taiwan’s digital development status survey findings with subjective indictors show:
(1) The current implementation status of Taiwan’s e-governance related to public values needs to be improved in all three operational, political and social areas.
(2) In terms of operational values, the “average number of government agencies contacted to obtain a service”, within the process reengineer dimension, are in most need of improvement.
(3) In terms of political values, “administrative transparency”,
“administrative accountability”, and“participation in public affairs”are all in need of much improvement.
(4) In terms of social values, political trus t and certain aspects of social trust and trust on the internet, which are related to the trust dimension, need to be enhanced. Indicators related to self-development dimension, such as online trading behaviors, also have poor performance. Finally, “life safety” and
“happiness”, related to the quality of life dimension, also need to be improved.
(5) Even if internet users are treated as the survey respondents, different survey methods still yield significantly different results. This demonstrates that is it necessary for future researches to compare the results among multiple survey methods and discuss their differences.
(6) The use of subjective indicators to measure operational values is severely restricted. Thus, in the future study, whether the general citizenry should be subjected to answer survey questions, whether subjective indicators should be adopted, or
whether the traditional telephone survey should still be used in surveying the citizens, are all questions worth to be further discussed.
6. Findings from the comparison and analysis of multiple survey methods:
(1) Data collected from multiple survey methods are compared to the results of the TEDS 2013, in order to determine the representativeness of the samples. The results of these comparisons would serve as the basis for future national digital development status research. The results show that samples collected from telephone surveys and mobile phone surveys both demonstrate over or underestimations regarding to variables of gender, age, education, resident ial areas, and the usage of internet.
(2) Increasing numbers of citizens have begun to rely only on mobile phones and not use telephone anymore. A certain amount of the citizens could be ignored unintentionally if we rely only on telephone surveys to collect data.
(3) When comparing to all other survey methods, the internet survey conducted by this research has the highest reliability, acceptable cost, and speedy completion. Adopting the internet survey method for future research is recommended.
(4) A central question for future research is to consider how to combine the mobile phone survey and the internet survey with the traditional telephone survey in order to construct a comprehensive framework to study national digital development status.
(5) Although the government website membership (My E-Gov)
survey has the lowest cost, its sample representativeness is limited and the time to process the survey is longer. This method is more suitable to survey e-service oriented topics.
(6) An interesting observation from the survey results shows that most internet and government website users are female according to the results from the telephone survey and My E-Gov membership survey. But, most internet and government website users are male on the basis of results from the mobile phone survey and the internet survey.
(7) Comparisons of the survey results reveal that, excluding the telephone survey, internet users in general have a higher degree of education. An analysis of the data collected from all survey methods present most respondents are between the ages of 20 and 49, and live in the northern (Taipei City, New Taipei City, Keelung City and Yilan County) and central (Taichung City, Changhua County and Nantou County) regions of Taiwan. Only few respondents live in the offshore (Kinme n County, Lienchiang County and Penghu County), eastern (Hualien County and Taitung County) and southern (Kaohsiung City and Pingtung County) regions. Our results are consistent with the past Digital Opportunity Survey findings, which are conducted by the NDC of the Executive Yuan, and thus affirm that government recently dedicating to elevate the digital opportunities of senior citizens is a correct direction.
(8) Future adjustments and discussions about multiple survey methods that we apply in this research a re necessary. Clarifying the features for each survey method and searching for the best combination would be a key issue for future related e-governance studies.