Evaluation of Digital Transformation of Government: Russian and international systems of indicators

Abstract

Russian government has started the reforms based on digital transformation ideas in 2010. The reforms resulted in successful installation of quite advanced infrastructure of digital government. By E-government development index Russia is now in the group of very-high performing countries. Other ratings did not show the same success of the country in other areas of economy, governance and political life. Although digitalization enhances accountability, efficiency and transparency of government, help to reduce costs and lead to better governance, there are examples when countries do not reach these goals despite the implementation of digital technologies. An important part of it is poorly designed strategy of reforms. Particularly, the case when the indicators of achievement the goals of digitalization do not conform closely to what is widely thought to be the modern digital government. In this case even actual accomplishment of the targeted values cannot testify existence of a working e-government. The objectives of this research are to analyze the system of indicators that the Russian government set for the digital reform and to compare this system to international evaluation systems and theoretical background. The research question is whether the indicators that government set can really show the transformation to the digital government. Using analysis of e-government objectives and indicators stated in the adopted legislative acts and their relation with international digital and e-government common goals and the indicators the authors have tried to analyze the reasons why successful performance in e-government reforms in Russia did not lead to new quality of governance. The analysis showed that the system of evaluation of e-government does not meet the requirements and even the proper values of all the indicators will not help to implement real digitalization.