E-Government development index and its comparison in the EU member states

Abstract

This paper deals with a comparison of the e-Government development index, which is presented by the United Nations since 2003, usually every two years. It compares and describes the progress of this index between the years 2008 and 2014 in the European Union Member States in the context of the economic decline and the global recession. It also considers factors contributing to successful e-Government implementation, such as unemployment or inflation rate. The purpose of the submitted research study is to identify the influence of the selected macroeconomic indicators on the e-Government development index. The methodology of this research study comprised bibliographic studies, analysis of specialised reports, statistical analyses and evaluations. The main methods used were descriptive, correlation and the cluster analysis, which was in this case represented by the connectivity model (hierarchical clustering) as well as the centroid model (K-means clustering). The findings confirmed that the global recession and the Eurozone crisis have influenced the progress of the e-Government in the evaluated years. This research study provides insights that may be useful in improving the implementation of e-Government services.