A study of institutional, contextual and socioeconomic factors affecting county e-government

Governments at all levels in the United States are rapidly transforming to Internet to provide public services and public administrators are increasingly implementing various strategies to enable this transformation. Scholars and academicians have researched the growth of this phenomenon in recent decades, including the factors associated with the adoption of e-government at the state and municipals levels. E-Government literature however provides little information related specifically to counties’ adoption of e-government in the United States. Research on county e-government has tended to focus primarily on socioeconomic factors. Although some researchers have studied the effect of institutional and contextual factors on county e-government in particular states, none have studied their influence on counties across the United States.;Based on a survey of county administrators who are primarily responsible for e-government services, this research attempts to capture the role played by institutional, contextual and socioeconomic factors on e-government adoption at the county level all over the United States. The institutional variables consist of size and structure of the county government, budget resources, technical capacity, stakeholder support, contracting and presence of an IT champion. The contextual variables consist of the measure of the county’s professional networking, external collaboration, regional pressure and business demand in the county. Additionally, certain socio-economic variables are considered, such as population, education and income level of the county residents.;These factors are tested based on an evaluation of county websites using a conceptual framework consisting of three e-government dimensions: e-information, e-transaction and e-participation. These dimensions are operationalized based on the Rutgers E-Governance Index and validated by an expert review process. Literature also suggests an evolutionary approach to e-government growth—in terms of stages ranging from webpage development to full service integration and the involvement of all sections of society. Accordingly, the research also tests the stages of development of e-government among counties by assessing their status in each dimension and determining if the proposed dimensions follow a staged pattern.