Approaches to Evaluation of Digital Transformation of Government: Comparative Analysis of Indicators in the Central and Eastern European Countries

E-government emphasizes new values of governance, such as civic engagement, openness and participation, it helps with reduction of costs and leads to better quality. However, there are countries that 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 strategy do not conform closely to what is widely thought to be the modern digital government. In this case even the actual accomplishment of the targeted values cannot testify to the existence of a working e-government. The objectives of this research are to undertake a comparative analysis of the systems of indicators that Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries set for the digital reform and to compare these systems to international evaluation systems and theoretical background. The research question is whether the indicators that governments set can really show the transformation to the digital government. Using analysis of e-government indicators contained in the adopted reform programs and their relation with international digital government common goals and the indicators the author has tried to compare the approaches of the CEE countries to the reforms. The analysis showed that the systems of evaluation of e-government often do not meet all the requirements, and even the proper values of all the indicators cannot testify to the implementation of genuine digital government.