Determining Factors of E-government Development: A Worldwide National Approach

The implementation of e-government aims at simplifying and improving the relationships and transactions between public administrations and their users or customers. In this vein, the objective of this work is to analyze the factors that promote the development of e-government in the national governments of 192 countries worldwide, differentiating between developed and developing countries. Our findings emphasize that the development of e-government requires that countries have a degree of economic development that enables their citizens to have a certain standard of living, both economic and cultural, as well as important internal government reforms which promote administrative effectiveness. Once these essential factors are fulfilled, the national government's online presence is favored by governments that rule with a majority in their parliaments and with an important fiscal capacity. Notes Note: **Significant at 0.01 (bivariate); *Significant at 0.05 (bivariate). Note: *Standardized coefficient. Significant variables in bold. The empirical studies described in Appendix A reflect that most of the previous articles attempt to identify the presence of a Web page with financial and other similar typologies of information available. However, several papers, such as Elsheikh, Cullen, and Hobbs (Citation2008) for Jordan local governments, McNeal et al. (Citation2003) for U.S. states, and Torres, Pina, and Acerete (Citation2006) for UE local governments, also analyze online service delivery, but differently from our approach. They just focus on a reduced number of explanatory factors of this e-government stage, whereas the current work encompasses a broader set of variables, such as the style of public administration, political features, and socioeconomic characteristics. Again, in Appendix A it is possible to observe that studies are specially oriented to analyzing local governments from a specific country or region. Yet it is worth noting that some studies (e.g., Kim Citation2007; Siau and Long 2005; Citation2009; West Citation2001; Citation2002; Citation2003) also analyze the explanatory factors of e-government development in national administrations; as stated above, this work extends previous studies by including a broad set of drivers behind e-government evolution, many of which have not been analyzed in the national sphere (such as some political factors). Moon and Norris (2005) show how adoption of municipal e-government is influenced by managerial innovativeness orientation, government capacity, and institutional characteristics such as city size and government type. More specifically, after analyzing the situation in American municipalities, they find that managerial innovativeness orientation and city size are the most compelling determinants of municipal e-government adoption. In the current study, we apply this framework by extending it to the analysis of e-government in national governments. Table 1 offers a detailed description of the different variables proposed to test the hypotheses. Additional informationNotes on contributorsLuis Rodríguez Domínguez Luis Rodríguez-Domínguez (lrodomin@usal.es) is an Associate Professor at the University of Salamanca. He received his PhD from the University of Salamanca (Spain). His research focuses on intangibles, corporate social responsibility, e-government, and business ethics. Isabel Maria García Sánchez Isabel Maria García Sánchez is an Associate Professor of Accounting at University of Salamanca, where she earned her PhD in Economics and Management Sciences in 2004. Her main research areas have to do with corporate social responsibility, disclosure of online information, public management, and sustainable development. Isabel Gallego Álvarez Isabel Gallego Álvarez, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of Salamanca. Her research focuses on accounting and taxes, and corporate social responsibility.