Does e-government reduce the administrative burden of businesses? An assessment of business-to-government systems usage in the Netherlands

The reduction of the administrative burden on businesses is an important governmental policy objective. Electronic government is presented as a promising reduction strategy in many countries. Underlying assumptions and mechanisms are hardly ever made explicit and scientific evidence of successful implementations is scarce. This paper presents an assessment of business-to-government systems in use in the Netherlands. Results show that organizational characteristics are the most influencing factors of perceived burden reduction and implementation effectiveness. Whereas perceived organizational benefits positively relate to the overall confirmation of the former system adoption decision. Surprisingly the quantitative, usage related characteristics do not present any statistical relevance. These findings help us understand existing differences in appreciation between business and governmental representatives on the successfulness of e-government projects in reducing the administrative burden on businesses. Furthermore, research results can help to enhance the effectiveness of e-government policy and measurement instruments.     

Evaluating IT innovations in a business-to-government context: A framework and its applications

This paper highlights the challenges of assessing the value of business-to-government IT innovations for both private and public stakeholders. Due to the different backgrounds of inhomogeneous stakeholders, potential adopters of business-to-government systems have varying requirements; in particular, they address understandings of value attributed to the implementation and the usage of such systems. Incorporating specific perspectives of each stakeholder in its own domain for evaluation is vital for supporting diffusion of IT innovations. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a value assessment framework that combines the value understanding from both public and private stakeholders. Applying this framework not only allows the value assessment of business-to-government IT innovations incorporating different needs and requirements of various current stakeholders, but it also provides common and objective evaluation criteria on similar business-to-government IT innovations for potential adopters from both domains. We discuss the application of the proposed value framework in the case of e-customs systems redesign based on an example of the introduction of e-customs IT solutions in a Finnish multinational company.