Assessing the quality of a cross-national e-government Web site: a study of the forum on strategic management knowledge exchange

As organizations have begun increasingly to communicate and interact with consumers via the Web, so the appropriate design of offerings has become a central issue. Attracting and retaining consumers requires acute understanding of the requirements of users and appropriate tailoring of solutions. Recently, the development of Web offerings has moved beyond the commercial domain to government, both national and international. In this paper, we examine the results of a quality survey of a cross-national e-government Web site provided by the OECD. The site is examined before and after a major redesign process. The instrument, WebQual, draws on previous work in three areas: Web site usability, information quality, and service interaction quality to provide a rounded framework for assessing e-commerce and e-government offerings. The metrics and findings demonstrate not only the strengths and weaknesses of the sites before and after design, but the very different impressions of users in different member countries. These findings have implications for cross-national e-government Web site offerings.