Effectiveness is a key feature of good governance, as the public sector must make the best use of resources to comply with the needs of the population. Several indicators can be analyzed to evaluate the effectiveness of a service. This study analyzes theoretical references and presents a systematic research of indicators to assess the effectiveness of digital public services in the perspective of the user. First, a literature review was carried out to identify the most common indicators employed to evaluate effectiveness in the public sector; then, the perception of academics and professionals regarding digital government was assessed to analyze the relevance of these indicators. As a result, two groups of indicators were found: technical factors based on service quality and usefulness of the service. This work contributes to enrich the discussion on how to create an effective model to evaluate the effectiveness of public services to guarantee quality standards and comply with the expectations of users.

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How motivated a person is to pursue a goal may depend on many different properties of the goal, such as how specific it is, how important it is to the person, and how actionable it is. Rigorously measuring all of the relevant goal characteristics is still very difficult. Existing measures are scattered across multiple research fields. Some goal characteristics are not yet covered, while others have been measured under ambiguous terminology. Other conceptually related characteristics have yet to be adapted to goals. Last but not least, the validity of most measures of goal characteristics has yet to be assessed. The aim of this study is to: a) integrate, refine, and extend previous measures into a more comprehensive battery of self-report measures, the Goal Characteristics Questionnaire (GCQ; https://osf.io/3gxk5/?view_only=1ff0e62127c64b82862a0fe7d73c4faf), and b) investigate its evidence of validity. In two empirical studies, this paper provides evidence for the validity of the measures regarding their internal structure, measurement invariance, and convergence and divergence with other relevant goal-related measures, such as the motivation, affect, and the dimensions of Personal Project Analysis. The results show that our goal characteristic dimensions have incremental validity for explaining important outcomes, such as goal commitment and well-being. It concludes with practical recommendations for using the GCQ in research on goal-setting and goal-pursuit, and a discussion about directions for future studies

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