A SYSTEMATIC MAPPING STUDY OF EGOVERNMENT INITIATIVE CORE ASPECTS

Abstract

The importance of eGovernment applications has attracted considerable attention all over the world. This is due to the fact that eGovernment applications provide multiple benefits to its users, such as increased efficiency, transparency, and productivity at a lower cost. However the complexity and variety of the initiative infers the existence of a number of challenges to the domain, such as technical, financial, cultural, organizational, and social barriers. These issues lie in different areas or aspects such as in management, and implementation, etc., and delay the progress of eGovernment initiatives. Therefore, the issues that come in the way of eGovernment progress must be treated very carefully. In order to avoid eGovernment issues and unintended effects, the practitioners must put some additional effort and consider different primary perspectives and aspects of eGovernment projects. A number of researchers agree that eGovernment initiatives require an appropriate method to enhance project’s quality and reliability, and need to identify core issues that hamper the progress. The researchers suggest that these issues can be identified and removed when few core aspects are considered and carried out effectively to achieve higher quality and more reliable eGovernment system. Many eGovernment studies exist for eGovernment challenges and about the importance of some important areas in eGovernment as separate topics. However, there is no comprehensive understanding of what key aspects should be considered and analyzed, what focus areas exist in these eGovernment aspects or how they enhance eGovernment activities. Therefore, to address this gap, we carried out a systematic mapping study using review protocol, to classify and to structure the research evidence that has been published in the eGovernment field and the focus areas reported by them. One hundred and thirty two (132) empirical studies have been quantitatively mapped to the classification schema. The major eGovernment aspects are identified as adoption, development, implementation, management, infrastructure, and stakeholders’ importance. Several research gaps and vital eGovernment subjects for practitioners are identified. As an outcome, this study has produced a list of possible eGovernment aspects to be considered to move towards successful eGovernment initiatives.