The evaluation of e-government websites has received considerable attention over the years; however, the public values perspective of e-government websites have been widely overlooked, especially in developing countries. This is worrisome as one of the primary goals of e-government websites is to deliver public values, since these sites are often the main platform for government interaction with other stakeholders. As such, this study bridged the existing knowledge gap by evaluating 279 e-government websites from 31 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, based on the public values perspective. The examined public values included accessibility, citizen engagement, development of trust, responsiveness, dialogue, and quality of information and services. The results showed that the performance of Sub-Saharan Africa e-government websites was highly unsatisfactory when it comes to the delivery of public values. This possibly provides an explanation as to why the region has been consistently ranked the worst in terms of e-government development, as e-government development focuses on public values delivery. The study culminates by providing both practical, theoretical, and policy implications of the findings.
| INTRODUCTIONOver the past 2 decades, many governments in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have espoused information and communication technologies (ICTs) into their key activities as a means to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency with which information and services are delivered to citizens and other stakeholders. One of the most common ICT espousals by governments is government websites that have been developed for use in public administration and service/information delivery to citizens. According to Karkin and Janssen (2014), these websites (commonly referred to as e-government websites) are increasingly becoming the fundamental platform for interaction between governments and citizens.Researchers (Rorissa & Demissie, 2010;Nawafleh, Obiedat, & Harfoushi, 2012) have noted that e-government websites have become so popular such that almost every country around the globe has implemented at least one e-government website. This is not surprising as e-government websites are increasingly seen as an essential strategic tool that governments can use to facilitate interactions with the general public, especially the provision of public services (Pratchett, Wingfield, & Polat, 2006). Also, the dissemination of information and delivery of services via e-government websites can significantly enhance the administrative efficiencies of governments, increase citizen trust in governments, and promote democratic governance (Elbahnasawy, 2014;Jun, Wang, & Wang, 2014).Over 6 years ago, Rorissa and Demissie (2010) reported that almost all governments in SSA had implemented some form of e-government website ranging from static web pages to advanced web portals for providing services to the general public. However, little is known about the progress of e-government websites in SSA to date, and existing evidence suggests that e-g...