A Public Value Based Framework for Evaluating the Performance of e-Government in China

Much research has been done on evaluating the performance of e-government in China, but comprehensive pictures of research done on evaluation of performance of e-government can hardly be found in the Chinese literature. Besides, there are few theories to support the research and practice in evaluation. By analyzing existed literature, the paper proposes a conceptual framework for evaluating performance of e-government based on public value perspective. Delivery of public services, effectiveness of public organization and development of trust are identified and selected as three basic public values for analysis.


Introduction
"Electronic Government" (or in short "e-Government") essentially refers to 'The utilization of IT, ICTs, and other web-based telecommunication technologies to improve and enhance on the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery in the public sector.' (Jeong, 2007) [1].With the development of information and communication technologies (or in short ICT), the concept of electronic government becomes more and more popular all over the world.In the background of information and knowledge economy, the construction of E-government has become a necessity [2][3].However, with the constant pressure of investment on e-government, evaluating the performance of e-government becomes urgent.To the government, it has provided an effective way to reduce the operating costs for government and at the same time, to enhance the administrative ability of government [4].To the citizens, evaluation of performance of e-government has provided an opportunity for citizen to participate in the e-government services and to increase the availability of government information and to improve their public services which will be beneficial to meet the citizens' needs [5,6].
Many e-government projects and research have been done in China, however, e-government performance research in China are either from the perspective of government agencies or from the perspective of citizens, no convergence of both as an integrated whole and lacks of theoretical support.This paper recommends adoption of concept of public value as theoretical support to the evaluation.In this paper, the concept of public value refers to a holistic approach to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of public services (Moore, 1995) [7].Firstly, this paper has reviewed representative Chinese and English literature on "evaluation of performance of e-government" from CSSCI, ProQuest database, EI, SCI, SSCI, ISTP, ISSHP citied journals.Representative theory, strategies practices have been selected for study.Then based on literature review and meta-synthesis, a new conceptual framework for evaluation of e-government performance is put up.

Literature Review
Literature shows there is little research on evaluation of performance of e-government under the perspective of public value in Chinese literature.However, the concept of public value has been aroused much attention and has been widely used in the designing of framework for e-government performance evaluation in English literature.Figure 1 shows an overview of five representative papers: The five representative papers all share same concept of public value, but each has different advantages and limitations.The first paper focuses on high quality of services, outcomes and trust with limitations on trust not fully discussed.(Keams, 2004) [8].The second paper focuses on the operating efficiency of government, the publicity and transparency of public agencies, the public percep-tion on public service politics and user.It has limitations on not enough attention to the impact of e-government on information society (E-GEP, 2006) [9].The third paper focuses on the public value created by portals of Russiagovernment, but limitations are that the portals cannot represent the whole e-government performance (Golubeva, 2007) [10].The fourth paper focuses on aspects of service, outcomes and trust, but "trust" is also not fully discussed, which are similar to the drawbacks of the first paper Heeks, 2008) [11].The fifth paper focuses Nan integrated frame workc onsists of multiple aspects of public value, including delivery of public services, achievement of outcomes, development of trust and effectiveness of public organization as shown in Figure 2. The framework was justified in Sri Lanka, it has both practical and theoretical significance for e-government performance evaluation.Each of the above approach provides different concerns on what consists of public value.Deng's view on public values is the most comprehensive one, but the justification based on Sri Lanka is limited by the country's experience, whether it can be applied to China need to be verified [12][13][14][15][16].
Taking prons and cons of the five representative perspectives into consideration, they have providedfollowing implications to the formulation a conceptual framework for China: Firstly, evaluation perspective should be comprehensive, from both government agencies and citizens sides, rom government side, quality of public service and efficiency should be focused on [17].From the citizens' side, satisfaction and the attitude towards e-government should be clearly defined.
Secondly, evaluation indicators should be comprehensive [18]; various views on what consists of public value from five representative papers could be a good reference, particularly Professor Deng's comprehensive framework.
Thirdly, the framework should be based on Chinese practice and goals of e-government in China.

A Conceptual Framework for China
Taking the above implications into consideration, this paper proposes an adaption of Hepu Deng's conceptual framework for China, as shown in Figure 3: The proposed framework as shown in Figure 4, including (A) delivery of public services (B) effectiveness of public organization(C) development of trust.Each public value creation part also consists of several subordinate elements which can concretely evaluate the public value, as shown in Table 1.These key subordinate elements are from the existed frameworks of other scholars, taking the above implications into consideration for selection.

Table 1. Origin indicators for the public value-based framework for evaluating the performance of e-government[19].
The delivery of public services has six attributes: (A1) service availability (A2) importance (A3) choice (A4) fairness (A5) cost savings(A6) citizens' satisfaction.These attributions are inherited from Kearns (2004) and Heeks (2008)'s perspectives on public service, at the same time, adding availability and importance of information toavail-ability and importance of public service, as a result, the wholeness of performance of e-government would be better viewed.Furthermore, compared to Deng's description on "cost saving", the "cost" in new framework not only means the cost saving made by public, but also include the cost saving made by government agency.
Effectiveness of public organization has three attributes, (B1) efficiency (B2) citizens' perceptions (B3) interactive communication.Firstly, concept of "efficiency" is adopted from the explanation of Moore(1995)in which the efficiency of organization was discussed.Secondly, "interactive communication" is learned from the explanation of "accountability" in the framework on economic assessment of e-government of e-GEP (2006) , which emphasizes the interactive communication between the public and government.Thirdly, the "citizens' perception" is from indicators of positive and negative effects made by government agency to the public, which focuses on the promotion of organization driven by egovernment from the perspective of the public from Deng's paper.
Development of trust has four attributes: (C1) security and privacy (C2) transparency (C3) trust (C4) participation.What should be mentioned here is that the attribution "transparency" is integrated with the thought of government affairs openness, which will be one of the direct indicators for assessing the performance of e-government.
In this framework, both government agencies and citizens' perceptions have been taken into consideration, and the multiple dimensions and attributes of public value and their possible use in China have been fully taken into consideration, adaptable to overall situation of e-government practice in China.

Conclusions
Evaluation of performance of e-government is a comprehensive adaptive system, which should consist of both government and citizen actions and their feedbacks for continual improvement.To overcome the separated and isolated evaluation studies and practices in China, this paper recommends a holistic view of public value to formulate a comprehensive framework for evaluating the performance of e-government.This paper is limited to conceptual framework formulation based on literature review; justification study done by surveys will be discussed in another paper.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.An overview of the evolution of performance of e-government under public value perspective.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3.The public value-based framework for evaluating the performance of e-government.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Indicators associated with the attributes of the conceptual framework.