Building Accountability in e-government Services: Inputs for Policy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v29.5175Keywords:
e-government, Digital Accountability, TISM, MICMAC, Best-Worst MethodAbstract
Governments worldwide are investing many resources in developing digital government infrastructure and networks. Government webpages and supersites are substituting for their brick-and-mortar offices and physical state-citizen communication. This shift is transforming the administration and the process of digital government. We also see a growing push for expanding the role of citizens as participants and co-creators of policy and programs for establishing a collaborative digital government. This study examines the Indian e-government setup to explain how governments can ensure ‘accountability by policy design,’ or Digital Accountability (DA), on e-government service (eGS) websites. A mixed-method research design is used to uncover the critical design factors that can help build and maintain accountability on any government service (eGS hereafter) website. Our results show that Transparency remains the most important dimension, but concerns about security and privacy have also become foundational to the conceptualisation of accountability. Another important finding shows that building accountability is meaningful only if there is responsiveness and a sense of user control over the services. The findings also establish an explicit requirement to establish liability for service quality and effectively enforce a sense of accountability in modern eGS. We believe our findings can help improve the theoretical understanding of accountability in eGS while providing actionable insights to practitioners and policymakers to ensure accountable services in the digital age.
References
Ackerman, J. M. (2005). Social accountability in the public sector:A conceptual discussion (No. 35733; WBI Working Papers).
Aman, A., Abdullah Al-Shbail, T., & Mohammed, Z. (2013). Enhancing Public Organizations Accountability Through E-Government Systems. International Journal of Conceptions on Management and Social Sciences, 1(1), 2357--2787.
Antoni, D., Apriliani, Herdiansyah, M. I., & Akbar, M. (2018). Critical factors of transparency and trust for evaluating e-government services for the poor. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Informatics and Computing, ICIC 2017, 2018-Janua, 1–6. doi.org/10.1109/IAC.2017.8280612
As-Saber, S., Hossain, K., & Srivastava, A. (2007). Technology, society and e-government: In search of an eclectic framework. Electronic Government, 4(2), 156–178. doi.org/10.1504/EG.2007.013981
Barrett, P. (2019). New development: Reviews of public sector performance—groundhog day? Public Money and Management, 39(7), 521--527. doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2019.1579441
Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., & Grimes, J. M. (2012). Promoting transparency and accountability through ICTs, social media, and collaborative e-government. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, 6(1), 78--91. doi.org/10.1108/17506161211214831
Bindu, N., Sankar, C. P., & Kumar, K. S. (2019). From conventional governance to e-democracy: Tracing the evolution of e-governance research trends using network analysis tools. Government Information Quarterly, 36(3), 385–399. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.02.005
Bjoern, N. (2005). Epistemological perspectives on multi-method information systems research. Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Information Systems, Information Systems in a Rapidly Changing Economy, ECIS 2005.
Bolívar, M. P. R., Pérez, C. C., & Hernández, A. M. L. (2007). The Case of Spanish Regional Governments. The American Review of Public Administration, 37(2), 142–177.
Bovens, M. (2005). Public accountability. In The Oxford Handbook of Public Management (pp. 182–208). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.315.7116.1167
Bovens, M. (2007). Analysing and Assessing Accountability: A Conceptual Framework. European Law Journal, 13(4), 447–468. doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0386.2007.00378.x
Brandsma, G. J., & Schillemans, T. (2013). The accountability cube: Measuring accountability. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 23(4), 953--975. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mus034
Brinkerhoff, D. W., & Wetterberg, A. (2016). Gauging the Effects of Social Accountability on Services, Governance, and Citizen Empowerment. Public Administration Review, 76(2), 274–286. doi.org/10.1111/puar.12399
Clarke, A. (2020). Digital government units: what are they, and what do they mean for digital era public management renewal? International Public Management Journal, 23(3), 358–379. doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2019.1686447
Criado, J. I., & Guevara-Gómez, A. (2021). Public sector, open innovation, and collaborative governance in lockdown times. A research of Spanish cases during the COVID-19 crisis. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, December. doi.org/10.1108/TG-08-2020-0242
Dahiya, B. (2016). Smart economy in smart African cities: Sustainable, inclusive, resilient and prosperous. In Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements.
Drach-Zahavy, A., Leonenko, M., & Srulovici, E. (2018). Towards a measure of accountability in nursing: A three-stage validation study. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 74(10), 2450–2464. doi.org/10.1111/jan.13735
Dubnick, M. J., & Frederickson, H. G. (2011). Public Accountability: Performance Measurement, the Extended State, and the Search for Trust. National Academy of Public Administration & The Kettering Foundation.
Dubnick, M. J., & Justice, J. B. (2004). Accounting for Accountability. In annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. doi.org/10.1111/puar.12220
Dunleavy, P., Margetts, H., Bastow, S., & Tinkler, J. (2006). New public management is dead - Long live digital-era governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 16(3), 467–494. doi.org/10.1093/jopart/mui057
Eshiet, I. (2019). Voice and Accountability. International Journal of Political Activism and Engagement, 6(3), 10–22. doi.org/10.4018/ijpae.2019070102
Fox, J. (2014).: Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say? In Global partnership for social accountability. doi.org/10.5848/amacom.978-0- Evidence Really Social Accountability 814410-93-6_5
Fox, J. A. (2015). Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say? World Development, 72, 346–361. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.03.011
Greve, C. (2015). Ideas in Public Management Reform for the 2010s. Digitalisation, Value Creation and Involvement. Public Organization Review, 15(1), 49–65. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11115-013-0253-8
Gupta, H., & Barua, M. K. (2016). Identifying enablers of technological innovation for Indian MSMEs using best-worst multi criteria decision making method. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 107, 69–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.03.028
Halachmi, A., & Greiling, D. (2013). Transparency, E-government, and accountability: Some issues and considerations. Public Performance and Management Review, 36(4), 562–584. doi.org/10.2753/PMR1530-9576360404
Hardy, K., & Maurushat, A. (2017). Opening up government data for Big Data analysis and public benefit. Computer Law and Security Review, 33(1), 30–37. doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2016.11.003
Harrison, T. M., & Sayogo, D. S. (2014). Transparency, participation, and accountability practices in open government: A comparative study. Government Information Quarterly, 31(4), 513–525. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2014.08.002
Hasan, H., & Linger, H. (2020). Letting the public in: dialectic tensions when local governments move beyond e-government to e-democracy. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 24, 1–31. doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v24i0.1897
Heinrich, F., & Brown, A. J. (2017). Measuring accountability performance and its relevance for anti-corruption: introducing a new integrity system-based measure. Crime, Law and Social Change, 68(3), 359–381. doi.org/10.1007/s10611-017-9712-4
Hladchenko, L. (2016). Government Financial Accountability and Transparency in the Digital World. ICT in Education, Research and Industrial Applications, 477–484.
Hooda, A., Gupta, P., Jeyaraj, A., & Dwivedi, Y. (2023). Clarifying the Role of E-Government Trust in E-Government Success Models: A Meta-analytic Structural Equation Modeling Approach. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 27, 1–22. doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v27i0.4079
Jena, J., Sidharth, S., Thakur, L. S., Kumar Pathak, D., & Pandey, V. C. (2017). Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM): approach and application. Journal of Advances in Management Research, 14(2), 162–181. doi.org/10.1108/JAMR-10-2016-0087
Kautz, K., Bjerknes, G., Fisher, J., & Jensen, T. (2020). Applying complex adaptive systems theory to understand distributed participatory design in contemporary, crowdsourced information systems development. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 24(2006), 1–24. doi.org/10.3127/AJIS.V24I0.2225
Keymolen, E., Prins, C., & Raab, C. (2012). Trust and ICT: New challenges for public administration. Innovation and the Public Sector, 19, 21–35. doi.org/10.3233/978-1-61499-137-3-21
Koorn, R., Voges, D., & van der knaap, P. (2010). Survey of accountability , trust , consent , tracking , security and privacy. In European Network and Information Security Agency, 2010. http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/it/library/deliverables/survey-pat
Koppell, J. G. S. (2005). Pathologies of accountability: ICANN and the challenge of “multiple accountabilities disorder.” Public Administration Review, 65(1), 94–108. doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2005.00434.x
Kumar, H., Singh, M. K., & Gupta, M. P. (2019). A policy framework for city eligibility analysis: TISM and fuzzy MICMAC-weighted approach to select a city for smart city transformation in India. Land Use Policy, 82(December 2018), 375–390. doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.12.025
Lee, R. L., & Joseph, R. C. (2013). An examination of web disclosure and organisational transparency. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), 2218–2224. doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.05.017
Lee, T. (David), Park, H., & Lee, J. (2019). Collaborative accountability for sustainable public health: A Korean perspective on the effective use of ICT-based health risk communication. Government Information Quarterly, 36(2), 226–236. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.12.008
Lindgren, I., Madsen, C. Ø., Hofmann, S., & Melin, U. (2019). Close encounters of the digital kind: A research agenda for the digitalisation of public services. Government Information Quarterly, 36(3), 427–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.03.002
Lindquist, E. A., & Huse, I. (2017). Accountability and monitoring government in the digital era: Promise, realism and research for digital-era governance. Canadian Public Administration, 60(4), 627–656. doi.org/10.1111/capa.12243
Mahmood, M. (2016). Enhancing citizens’ trust and confdence in government through digital transformation. International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 12(1), 99–110. doi.org/10.4018/IJEGR.2016010105
Maréchal, N. (2015). Ranking digital rights: Human rights, the Internet and the fifth estate. International Journal of Communication, 9(1), 3440–3449.
Margetts, H., & Dunleavy, P. (2013). The second wave of digital-era governance: A quasi-paradigm for government on the Web. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 371(1987). doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2012.0382
Matheus, R., & Janssen, M. (2020). A Systematic Literature Study to Unravel Transparency Enabled by Open Government Data: The Window Theory. Public Performance and Management Review, 43(3), 503–534. doi.org/10.1080/15309576.2019.1691025
Mathivathanan, D., Mathiyazhagan, K., Rana, N. P., Khorana, S., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2021). Barriers to the adoption of blockchain technology in business supply chains: a total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) approach. International Journal of Production Research, 59(11), 3338–3359. doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2020.1868597
Meijer, A. (2007). Digitisation and political accountability in the Netherlands and the USA: Convergence or reproduction of differences? Proceedings of the European Conference on E-Government, ECEG, January 2007, 309–319.
Meijer, A. J. (2003). Trust this document! ICTs, authentic records and accountability. Archival Science, 3(3), 275–290. doi.org/10.1007/s10502-004-1287-z
Mervyn, K., Simon, A., & Allen, D. K. (2014). Digital inclusion and social inclusion: a tale of two cities. Information Communication and Society, 17(9), 1086–1104. doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.877952
Mir, U. B., Kar, A. K., Dwivedi, Y. K., Gupta, M. P., & Sharma, R. S. (2020). Realising digital identity in government: Prioritising design and implementation objectives for Aadhaar in India. Government Information Quarterly, 37(2), 101442. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.101442
Mir, U. B., Sharma, S., Kar, A. K., & Gupta, M. P. (2020). Critical success factors for integrating artificial intelligence and robotics. Digital Policy, Regulation and Governance , 22(4), 307–331. doi.org/10.1108/DPRG-03-2020-0032
Mistry, J. J. (2012). The role of egovernance in mitigating corruption. Accounting and the Public Interest, 12(1), 137–159. doi.org/10.2308/apin-10287
Misuraca, G., & Viscusi, G. (2015). Is open data enough? E-governance challenges for open government. Standards and Standardisation: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, 1132–1148. doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-8111-8.ch054
Nasim, S. (2011). Total interpretive structural modeling of continuity and change forces in e-Government. Journal of Enterprise Transformation, 1(2), 147–168. doi.org/10.1080/19488289.2011.579229
OECD. (2020). The OECD Digital Government Policy Framework : Six dimensions of a Digital Government. In OECD Public Governance Policy Papers (Issue 2).
Omar, A. M. (2020). Digital Era Governance and Social Media: The Case of Information Department Brunei. In Employing recent technologies for improved digital governance (pp. 19–35). doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-1851-9.ch002
Park, S., & Gil-Garcia, J. R. (2022). Open data innovation: Visualisations and process redesign as a way to bridge the transparency-accountability gap. Government Information Quarterly, 39(1), 101456. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2020.101456
Paul, S. (2007). A case study of E-governance initiatives in India. The International Information & Library Review, 39(3–4), 176–184. doi.org/10.1016/j.iilr.2007.06.003
Petrakaki, D. (2018). Re-locating accountability through technology: From bureaucratic to electronic ways of governing public sector work. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 31(1), 31–45. doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-02-2017-0043
Pina, V., Torres, L., & Royo, S. (2007). Are ICTs improving transparency and accountability in the EU regional and local governments? An empirical study. Public Administration, 85(2), 449–472. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2007.00654.x
Rathore, A. K., Maurya, D., & Srivastava, A. K. (2021). Do policymakers use social media for policy design? A Twitter Analytics Approach. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 25, 1–31. doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v25i0.2965
Rezaei, J. (2015). Best-worst multi-criteria decision-making method. Omega (United Kingdom), 53, 49–57.doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2014.11.009
Rezaei, J. (2016). Best-worst multi-criteria decision-making method: Some properties and a linear model. Omega (United Kingdom), 64, 126–130. doi.org/10.1016/j.omega.2015.12.001
Roy, J. (2006). E-service delivery and new governance capacities: “Service Canada” as a case study. International Journal of Services, Technology and Management, 7(3), 253–271. doi.org/10.1504/IJSTM.2006.010050
Saldanha, D. M. F., Dias, C. N., & Guillaumon, S. (2022). Transparency and accountability in digital public services: Learning from the Brazilian cases. Government Information Quarterly, 39(2), 101680. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2022.101680
Salimi, N., & Rezaei, J. (2018). Evaluating firms’ R&D performance using best worst method. Evaluation and Program Planning, 66(September 2017), 147–155. doi.org/10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2017.10.002
Sharma, S., Kar, A. K., & Gupta, M. P. (2024). Untangling the web between digital citizen empowerment, accountability and quality of participation experience for e-government: Lessons from India. Government Information Quarterly, 41(3), 101964. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2024.101964
Sharma, S., Kar, A. K., Gupta, M. P., Dwivedi, Y. K., & Janssen, M. (2022). Digital citizen empowerment : A systematic literature review of theories and development models. Information Technology for Development, 1–28. doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2022.2046533
Sharma, S., Mir, U. B., Kar, A. K., & Gupta, M. P. (2022). A Case of Affordances: Collaborative Governance using Smartphones. International Journal of Electronic Government Research, 18(1), 1–21. doi.org/10.4018/IJEGR.301256
Shibin, K. T., Gunasekaran, A., & Dubey, R. (2017). Explaining sustainable supply chain performance using a total interpretive structural modeling approach. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 12(June), 104–118. doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2017.06.003
Shukla, M., & Mattar, L. (2019). Next generation smart sustainable auditing systems using Big Data Analytics: Understanding the interaction of critical barriers. Computers and Industrial Engineering, 128 (May 2018), 1015–1026. doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2018.04.055
Sørensen, E. (2012). Measuring the accountability of collaborative innovation. Innovation Journal, 17(1), 1–18.
Stamati, T., Papadopoulos, T., & Anagnostopoulos, D. (2015). Social media for openness and accountability in the public sector: Cases in the greek context. Government Information Quarterly, 32(1), 12–29. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2014.11.004
Sullivan, K., & Clarke, J. (2010). Balancing security and privacy in eGovernment services. 2010 IST-Africa, 1–7.
Torabi, S. A., Giahi, R., & Sahebjamnia, N. (2016). An enhanced risk assessment framework for business continuity management systems. Safety Science, 89, 201–218. doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2016.06.015
Twizeyimana, J. D., & Andersson, A. (2019). The public value of E-Government – A literature review. Government Information Quarterly, 36(2), 167–178. doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.01.001
United Nations. (2022). United Nations development programme: Digital Strategy 2022-2025. doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-444-86236-5.50086-9
van de Kaa, G., Janssen, M., & Rezaei, J. (2018). Standards battles for business-to-government data exchange: Identifying success factors for standard dominance using the Best Worst Method. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 137(July), 182–189. doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.07.041
Van Deursen, A. J. A. M., Helsper, E. J., Eynon, R., & Van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2017). The compoundness and sequentiality of digital inequality. International Journal of Communication, 11(March), 452–473.
Verma, A., Giri, A. K., & Debata, B. (2022). Leapfrogging into knowledge economy: Information and communication technology for human development. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 26, 1–22. doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v26i0.3883
Yeravdekar, S., & Behl, A. (2017). Benchmarking model for management education in India: A total interpretive structural modeling approach. Benchmarking, 24(3), 666–693. doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-06-2016-0082
Zimmermann, C. (2016). Framework and requirements for reconciling digital services and privacy. 24th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS 2016.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Swapnil Sharma, Arpan Kumar Kar, M.P. Gupta
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
AJIS publishes open-access articles distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Non-Commercial and Attribution License which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and AJIS are credited. All other rights including granting permissions beyond those in the above license remain the property of the author(s).
