The study of the functionality of government portals: a methodological proposal from the e-health.

AutorBouzas-Lorenzo, Ramón
CargoArtículo en inglés

El estudio de la funcionalidad de los portales gubernamentales: Una propuesta metodológica desde la e-Salud

INTRODUCTION

The development of devices that facilitate the interaction between citizens and administrations via the Internet has advanced considerably in developed countries over the last decade (European Commission, 2010; OECD, 2009; CapGemini, 2010b). The progress achieved has helped to transform the understanding of the relationships between the different actors involved in the process of public policy implementation (Griffith, Wilding and Ncvo, 2008; Klijn, Edelebons and Steijn, 2010). In addition to overcoming traditional bureaucratic barriers, and promoting participation and democracy (Fountain, 2001), much emphasis has been placed on trying to meet the expectations and needs of users more efficiently, while adjusting to available budgets (West, 2004; Bertot and Jaeger, 2008).

The user-centered approach requires an understanding of the way in which it interacts with administrations (OECD, 2009). This is just an initial, albeit mandatory step of a more ambitious strategy for achieving greater efficiency in services and reaching target audiences more effectively in a context of greater interoperability between different organizations involved in public policies (CapGemini, 2010a; Soares and Amaral, 2010).

In keeping with broader definitions (OECD, 2005; undesa, 2012), electronic government can be viewed as the intensive use of information and communication technologies (ICRS) for the purpose of generating conditions of good government through the efficient delivery of services and transfer of information, as well as the strengthening of public policy processes grounded in the creation of new ways for participation of all actors involved.

One of the supporting principles used to generate the conditions required by e-government is the web portal (Vassilakis, Lepouras and Halatsis, 2007; Luna-Reyes, Hernandez Garcia and Gil-Garcia, 2009), a preferential avenue for accessing remote services, as stated in recent reports (undesa, 2012; ontsi, 2012a).

The portal makes it easier for internal and external users to access services provided by different professional areas. By focusing on the user, and not on the technical dimension, the portal allows us to analyze a privileged access point to information, functions and services relevant to the labor or personal interests of an individual (Jupp, 2001; Oh et al., 2005; Granic, Mitrovic and Marangunic, 2011).

On the other hand, not unlike the concept of electronic government, the interpretation of the term e-health and the extent of its application in different arenas vary widely (Black et al., 2011). The European Commission (2010) defines the term as the "range of tools based on information and communication technologies used to assist and enhance the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and management of health and lifestyle". Similarly, the World Health Organization relates e-health with "the profitability and safe use of information and communication technologies to provide support in the different areas of health" (WHO, 2005, Resolution wha58.28).

Basically, e-health is connectivity (Marcus and Fabius, 2004) which makes it possible for the different actors involved in the health sector (patients and/or users, physicians, hospitals, paymasters, laboratories, pharmacies and suppliers) to communicate, as well as access information and services for the purpose of promoting the health and wellbeing of individuals, in addition to improving professional practice. In this field, not unlike many other areas of e-government, analyzing the institutional portal is as an effective way of evaluating the level of development of a particular health system (Czaja, Sharit and Nair, 2008).

Taking into account that, by definition, the success of implementing a public policy resides in mobilizing the combined, coordinated and interoperable efforts of the multiple organizations concerned, the purpose of this paper is to suggest a method of comprehensively analyzing the architecture of service delivery and citizen assistance through public web portals in a territorially decentralized sectoral environment, addressing accessibility, usability, and the information and services offered, as well as the communication mechanisms provided.

This paper, which elaborates on earlier approximations that took a disjointed look at aspects of back and front office in the field of e-government (Badenoch and Tomlin, 2004; Andreassen et al., 2007; Hesse and Shneiderman, 2007; Wilson, 2008) or were limited to compiling comparative inventories of the range of services provided (ontsi, 2010; WHO, 2010 and 2011), places health policy at the center of the analysis.

The method suggested here was applied to Spain's regional administrations (Autonomous Communities), whose portals were subjected to an examination that combined such techniques as the accessibility test, heuristic test and e-mystery user experiment on two levels: the first, more technological, which focuses on accessibility and usability; and the second, more operational from an e-government standpoint, which assesses the content offered, the scope of remote transactions for basic services and the extent of the communication support available to the public, as well as the quality of the assistance such channels provide. The result obtained is a measure of the advance of e-government practices in a policy that not only relies on the isolated action of a service provider, but also the interdependent capacity of a multilevel inter-administrative system to meet citizen demands.

Following this introduction, this paper presents the research method adopted, which in addition to shedding light on the main dimensions involved, justifies the choice of the different applied techniques and comments on some relevant earlier studies. Then it presents and furtherly elaborates on the main results achieved when applying the proposal to the assessment of the web portals that provide support to Spain's regional administrations, health policies. (1) Lastly, we draw some conclusions from the performance of the method used.

METHOD

Conceptual grounds

Inspired by the studies conducted over the last twenty years on usability, the method proposed uses the network of portals that an intermediary administration employs to service a sectoral policy as a unit of analysis; their efficiency not only depends on the features they offer within their professional area, but also on their capacity for interoperability with other administrations of the same level within the structure of a system in which a central administration acts as coordinator.

This contribution sheds some light on the concepts of accessibility, usability, electronic service, information and communication.

Following Hassan and Martin (2003a), we defined accessibility as "the possibility for a web product or service to be accessed and used by the greatest number of people regardless of their individual limitations or those derived from the context of their use".

The purpose of developing scientific literature on accessibility is triple (Friedman and Bryen, 2007): to provide legal prescriptions, to prepare and disseminate industrial standards, and to investigate the causes and effects of accessibility failures. However, as Kuzma, Yen and Oestreicher (2009) point out, despite the availability of standards and regulations, full accessibility to government websites is still rare, and the majority of them do not meet some common requirements.

Usability on the other hand, may be interpreted as the ease with which the user interacts with the website in respect to different properties (ubiquity, design, efficiency, functionality, and reliability). Usability is quality feature that assesses the easiness of user interfaces. Therefore, by studying them, one can figure out "a way of designing websites so that users are able to interact with them as easily, comfortably and as intuitively as possible" (Hassan, 2002).

Research on the evaluation of usability done over the last decade has focused on auditing portal features from a user-centered perspective (Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia, 2012) and on the quest for new approaches that provide benefits to citizens and low-cost production for developers (Hvannberg, Law and Larusdottir, 2007). The literature on methodologies derived from this line of study (contextualized usability, tests, user evaluation, and inspection) is extraordinarily prolific and transdisciplinary (Marcos and Canada, 2003; Hasan and Abuelrub, 2011; Granic, Mitrovic and Marangunic, 2011).

A bibliographical volume of similar proportions has been compiled from research on service delivery (Layne and Lee, 2001; West, 2004; Reddick, 2005; Anthopoulos, Siozos and Tsoukalas, 2007; Schedler and Summermatter, 2007; Mills, Carter and Belanger, 2010), management of information (Eschenfelder, 2004; Munoz and Chain, 2004) and communication in e-government environments (Chang and Wang, 2008; Belanger and Carter, 2012), all areas traditionally addressed by usability studies.

In the context of e-government, in line with the work undertaken by Vassilakis, Lepouras and Halatsis (2007), and Wang and Liao (2008), electronic service can be defined as the collection of features implemented by an entity through applications housed on their respective websites in order to meet the specific needs of the actors concerned. The method described here focuses on services aimed at citizens.

Information, on the other hand, is viewed as the range of data --open or restricted-- that the administration makes available to users through a website within its professional area concerned with the different actions of public interest (Charvet-Berard, Chopard and Perneger, 2008).

And, finally, communication is understood as the multidirectional relationship, via the web, which facilitates the active participation of users...

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