Chain Action - How Do Countries Add Value Through Digital Government?

Abstract

This study examines how countries develop and benefit from Digital Government (DG). The literature proposes various conceptualizations of the value-adding logic of DG, but the benchmarking practice is not responding to such proposals. For instance, the United Nations’ E-Government Survey combines the readiness and uptake indicators and fails to cover any impact indicators; thus, its diagnostic value is limited. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a new assessment scheme based on the DG value chain concept and pursue the question: how do the world countries add value in this chain? Reassembling the UN’s e-Government Survey indicators and the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, we examine how the 191 UN Member States converted their readiness into uptake and uptake into impact over the 2014-2018 period. The results rank the countries concerning their performance along the DG value chain, identify hotspots, and calculate the value