Exploring the Impact of E-Government:Perspective from Internal Customers
Tong-Yi Huang*
Abstract
Through literature review, this article first constructs an analytical framework by identifying and incorporating the factors explaining e-government's impact on civil servants. Based on the Internet survey data collected from public officials in Taiwan's central and local governments, this study uses factor analysis to explore the dimensions of e-government's impact on public officials. Regression analysis is further conducted to detect the explanatory power of demographic variables, perceived usefulness of e-government, work compatibility, IT capability, and need for IT on work. The findings suggest that e-government impact on civil servants based on the items we use in this study could be divided into three categories: helpfulness in work, usefulness in responding to citizens and pressure of being supervised. Our respondents are in general positive toward e-government in terms of its helpfulness in work and its usefulness in responding to citizens. The results of regression analysis indicate that age, lower rank vs. middle rank, computer usage outside work, IT capability, work compatibility, perceived usefulness are explanatory variables of e-government impact on civil servants. These findings suggest that variables in technology usage theory and planned behavior model could be extended to explaining e-government impact. Despite positive impact of e-government on civil servants, this study also finds that e-government increases our respondents' pressure of being supervised. Based on the above findings and the methodological constraint of this study, this article proposes suggestions for practitioners and further research agenda.
Keywords: civil servant, e-government, impact evaluation, internal customer
*Associate professor, Department of Public Administration, National Cheng-chi University.