Evolving e-government benchmarking to better cover technology development and emerging societal needs

Many international e-government benchmarks seek to measure progress towards various versions of a digital society, and in this endeavor include a component of e-government. But because comparable international e-government data are scarce, most reports rely on the United Nations E-Government Development Index, specifically its Online Service Index as a benchmark. However, this assessment only captures national level initiatives at a broad level and does not link evaluation to outcomes and impacts, i.e. e-government performance relative to investment.This paper briefly reviews the current UN framework and assesses how it can evolve to meet new demands, such as calls to better connect investm…