Unpacking Digital Accountability: Ensuring efficient and answerable e-governance service delivery

Abstract

Governments around the world are investing many resources to develop ubiquitous governance networks and information systems; this is seen as the advent of Digital Era Governance (DEG). Government websites or service platforms are replacing the physical offices of government department and in-person state-citizen interactions. It is a transformative shift in not only the workings of the State but also a change in the overall governance ecosystem. Citizens' role as co-creators and participants in policy and initiative design is increasing, and there is a general push for collaborative e-governance. With this study, we attempt to explore how governments can ensure accountability by design and policy, i.e., Digital Accountability in these websites or platforms that are going to act as a one-stop shop for citizens regarding government services. We have taken a multi-method approach to explore the various constituent factors that help build up accountability in any e-government process or websites delivering web services. Best Worst Method (BWM) is employed to find the relative weights of these factors in the chosen context. These are validated using qualitative techniques of Total Interpretative structural modelling, and the Matrix of Cross Impact Multiplications Applied to Classification (TISM-MICMAC). We have also attempted to explore the contextual relationships between these factors and how do they help conceptualise and operationalise digital accountability for e-governance.