E-Government in a Paragraph or

e-Government In a paragraph or two succinctly summarize a) motivation (what is the reason this study is being conducted) and b) research questions/goals. The overall motivation for this study is to ascertain the level of acceptance constituents in various government municipalities have to using e-government as a form of representation. For constituents, or citizens, to use e-government resources and actively participate, they must see value in and trust these initiatives.

To motivation for the study is to attempt to capture the value of e-government as strategy for constituents to use in regard to working with their elected representatives. To accomplish this, two main goals have been defined for the study. The first is to conceptualize the value of e-government, and what the author is referring to is the development of a series of frameworks and analytical constructs that bring order and consistency to the value-based judgments and levels of trust constituents have with e-government.

The second objective is to develop to research instruments to quantify both ends and means objectives. Web-based surveys are used specifically for this purpose. 2. This dissertation draws the "theory" from Keeney's work on value-focused thinking. Explain i) the idea of value-focused thinking, and, ii) ends vs. means objectives. Keeney's (1992) extensive published work on value-based thinking suggests that the focus of the decision maker needs to be on their values first, and alternatives second.

Keeney (1992) makes this point to underscore the potential of a value-based orientation to be catalysts for the creation of entirely new alternatives, unthought-of before through a more traditional alternatives-based approach to decision making. In his approach to values-focused thinking, Keeney also suggests that the context of the decision needs to be considered and conceptualized first, so the most relevant and most aligned alternatives are considered, evaluated and chosen by the decision maker.

Keeney, using this decision frame to define the decision maker's objectives and set of alternatives, also relies on the definition of means, fundamental or ends objectives and strategic objectives. Means objectives is one way to achieve another objective, in effect an alternative. A fundamental or ends objective (Keeney, R.L., H. Raiffa. 1993), is one that dictates the decision maker's choice of a specific decision context, and a strategic objective reflects the longer-term and much more permanent implications on the decision maker's organization and structure.

This approach to making decisions is widely used in the assessment and predicting of relative risk. It is recognized that a decision analytic framework is essential in making risk management decisions and mitigating them prior to accidents occur due to a limited range of alternatives being considered (Kaplan, 1997). 3. This dissertation is focused on measurement - therefore, the approach section is very important.

Browse thru the approach section and answer the following questions: What is being measured in the e-govt context? The researcher is measuring a series of attitudinal variables that cover the aspects of online security, willingness to acquire products or services online from a government site, trust of purchasing online from a government entity, and through a series of questions on network infrastructure including access speeds, the suitability of the governments' infrastructure to manage the inbound and outbound Internet traffic.

The research also looks to quantify and prioritize the various types of applications respondents would like to have on an e-government website, and measures their relative levels of trust in transacting with each application, depending on what level of personal information is needed. How is means-ends analysis (see ii) in question 2 above)) used to narrow down the scope of measurement? The researcher has specifically created a five-point Likert scale to measure the attitudes to means objectives to measure them through factor analysis statistical techniques vs. their ends, or fundamental objectives.

Using means-based objectives to guide to overall structure of the questionnaire assumes the decision frame has been defined, and in the context of this study, that frame is the use of electronic government applications. Discuss briefly, the research design (population & sample, instrument, proposed data collection and analysis etc.) succinctly. Administered to a respondent base of existing e-government application users via a web-based survey using attitudinal Likert scaling question structure to a total population of 1,000 users with 300 being the target response level best summarizes the methodology succinctly. 4.

If you can, make a single suggestion to improve the study. In making your suggestion, work within the existing the document (i.e., accept the research goals, the use of multiattribute method and means-ends analysis, use of a survey method etc.) What is most troubling about the methodology is that there are no e-government rejecter groups included in its design. Only those citizens already using the online tools are interviewed; there needs to be a rejecter parallel track in this research methodology as well. 5.