Measuring the Effectiveness of e-Official-Document Systems: A Survey of the Pingdong County Deployment in Taiwan

Government promulgates directives and disseminates information through official documents. Up to the present day, official documents are processed and routed by each person-in-charge up the chain of command in a government agency. At each stop, comments, recommendations, approval or disapproval on the issues addressed in the document are written on or alongside of the document. This paper-based and manually handled mode of operation is time-consuming and error-prone, and often draws complaints from people within the government and from the general public. The advancement of information technology has offered a great opportunity for improving the effectiveness of official document processing. An Internet-based official document processing system (call it “e-official-document system” for short) will not only expedite the document processing flow, which in turn improves administration efficiency, but also result in a big saving on paper, envelop, postage, etc. Furthermore, transport of documents will no longer be affected by weather or distance, which in turn affords promptness and reliability. This study constructed a research model to measure the effectiveness of the e-official-document system deployed in Pingdong County in Taiwan, in terms of its impact on user satisfaction, individual performance and the performance of subordinate agencies.