The Use of Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) in Evaluating Japan's E-government Services

The focus of this paper is to evaluate the benefits of a Japanese e-government project. In this research, the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) grid was used to measure the e-government benefits from the users’ perspective. A list of 27 government benefits was identified from the e-government literature reviews and each of the benefits was rated using a five point Likert scale. On a five point Likert scale, the online survey enables the users to rate the relative importance of the benefits, followed by another benefit performance rating. The purpose of the survey is not only to measure the actual satisfaction level, but also to highlight important areas for improvements. The IPA, a two-dimensional grid, is broken into four categories: (1) Concentrate Here; (2) Keep Up the Good Work; (3) Low Priority; and (4) Possible Overkill, to enable each of the benefits to be plotted into the grid. It is a clear and powerful evaluation tool for government to find out attributes that are doing well and attributes that need to be improved, which require action immediately. The results are useful in identifying areas for strategic focus to help develop Japan’s future e-government strategy.