A Comprehensive Framework for Measuring Governments’ Digital Initiatives Including Open Data

Abstract

Digital innovation and digital initiatives are generally recognized and considered to be the driving forces behind firm survival and success in the market. This is not the case in the public sector, where digital initiatives have suffered not only from a lack of research trying to explain them but also from a major lack of recognition of their importance. The government’s eagerness to introduce more digital initiatives for better e-government plays an important role in advancing the country. Digital initiatives in several governments are being overlooked, even though these days, private companies are competing to provide their customers with the best products and services. In this study, important attributes and sub-attributes of digital initiatives by governments are identified so that we can get a clearer picture of the government’s digital initiatives (GDIs). The attributes and sub-attributes are extracted and combined with the new, proposed attributes to make our all-encompassing framework (with the passage of time, maybe more attributes and sub-attributes can be added to the list). The identified attributes are either directly or indirectly related to projects under the government’s digital initiatives, which include open data for more transparent and accountable e-governance. The developed framework has been applied to Greece and Pakistan; the authors of the underlying study belong to Pakistan and Greece, and one more reason behind this is to measure the difference between the developing and developed countries’ GDIs and to evaluate the governments’ digital initiatives (GDIs) with respect to each attribute and sub-attribute. This research will help people understand the problems that governments face with GDIs and maybe provide recommendations for further development initiatives.