Evaluating and modelling constructs for e-government decision making

Abstract

It is now becoming increasingly well understood that the investment and evaluation of electronic government projects is determinant on a number of organisational, policymaking and decision-making factors, which are determining the success or failure of such endeavours. Given the increasing interest in the manner and methods by which public sector projects are implemented as well as evaluated, this paper attempts to synergise contemporary e-government project management (PM) components and synthesise these with extant principles of information systems evaluation. This is carried out in order to model and understand the underlying constructs and determinants of decision-making and operational dynamics within an electronic government case study. The authors seek to advance and apply the cognitive mapping technique of Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM), through the use of an interpretivist, empirical enquiry technique that is melded with an exploratory simulation of the key factors involved in e-government PM issues. The FCM allows the identification of the inter-relationships within this context and provides a basis for identifying those constructs of PM that drive the case study decision-making agenda. Correlative relationships are also highlighted alongside causal inter-relationships among the dynamic interacting nodes of the digraph representation, to fully explore the schema of project evaluation in e-government.