Good Governance for Development (GfD) in Arab Countries Working Group 2 on E-government and Administrative Simplification - High Level Seminar on Measuring and Evaluating E-government and 3 Working Group Meeting DOC N3 MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF E-GOVERNMENT IN OECD COUNTRIES

The text of this paper is part of the section on monitoring and evaluation of the OECD report " E-government Imperative " (2003). It gives an overview of the practices and discusses specific tools that OECD countries have developed to monitor and evaluate e-government (assessment of costs, benefits, demand and service quality) at the time the report was written. While the paper in large part reflects the status of the discussion on this topic at the time the report was produced, many considerations outlined in this paper are still relevant in today's debate on this topic and could help Arab countries in their attempt to better understand the risks and opportunities associated to monitoring and evaluating e-government. It is necessary to monitor and evaluate e-government to understand demand, assess the benefits to users of alternative proposals and evaluate the effectiveness of proposals in meeting their objectives. Evaluation is needed to argue the case for new projects and expenditure, to justify continuing with initiatives, to allocate additional IT funds, to assess progress towards programme goals and to understand impacts. Additionally, monitoring and evaluation can assist with programme consolidation and selection of standards. OECD countries recognise the importance of this issue, and e-government policies and strategies reflect this recognition. A number of promising initiatives exist in this area, although OECD countries acknowledge the need for improvement. Current efforts may be suitable for evaluating online services but do not take into account the back-office changes that accompany e-government.