Toward e-participation: Measuring and explaining performance

ABSTRACT We examine the variation in the implementation of e-participation across countries, and how selected attributes of these countries can explain such variation. We model how countries convert their technology infrastructure into online service maturity, and the latter into e-participation initiatives, as well as the determinants of efficiency at each stage of conversion. By applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to data from the United Nations E-Government Survey 2018 and the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project of the World Bank, we compare the efficiency of countries in the two stages of conversion: technology infrastructure into online services, and the latter into e-participation. Using regression modeling, we examine how the efficiency of the two stages of conversion depends on human capital and governance respectively. We find that the development of e-participation, given a certain level of online service maturity, depends on the stability of governance and the quality of regulation. Upstream, how efficiently technology infrastructure is converted into online service maturity depends upon the level of human capital available in a country. We identify countries that extract most value from the infrastructure they are endowed with, making them worthy of emulation by other countries, especially those with limited infrastructure.