Usability Measure of Chilean Public Online Services: an E-Government Case Study

Marcelo Garrido, Claudio Lavin, Nelson Rodríguez-Peña

Abstract


The possibility of conducting public online transactions means an important help to users and a reduction of governmental resources. However, the usage of the digital channel can get obstructed by different variables where the usability of the service plays an important role. This research presents a usability evaluation of 60 online services offered by the Chilean government. Following a heuristic evaluation model, we conducted a diagnosis and propose lines of improvement to the problems detected. The evaluation showed that the online services do not offer enough control to users, the services cause uncertainty while interacting with them, and there is not enough guidance to users during relevant steps of the interaction. The evaluation shows that usability is an important variable when explaining the difficulties of public online services spreading between users and it suggests that interventions in this sense could make more efficient the digital channel within the e-government context.

Keywords


E-government; Usability; Online Services; Digital Transactions; Heuristic Evaluation

Full Text:

PDF (Español)

References


Balcı, A., Dalcı, M., Karaman, E., Kutluoğlu, U., Yücel C. Y., Medeni, T. (2010) Spreading Website Usability and Accessibility into Society: Examples from Public and Private Sectors in Turkey. International Journal on eGovernment and eBusiness Studies, 2(1) 19-29.

Clancy, M. F. (2012). La guía de trámites del Estado argentino: una ventanilla de servicios accesible para todos los ciudadanos. XVII Congreso Internacional del CLAD sobre la Reforma del Estado y de la Administración Pública, Cartagena, Colombia, 30 oct.

Diagnóstico de Usabilidad y Calidad de la Información de los Portales de Internet de los Entes Públicos del Distrito Federal (2007) extraído desde http://www.paot.org.mx/contenidos/doc/Informe_transparencia07.pdf

Fang, Z. (2002). E-Government in Digital Era: Concept, Practice and Development. International journal of the Computer, the Internet and Management, 10(2)1-22.

Flavián, C., Guinalíu, M., & Gurrea, R. (2006). The role played by perceived usability, satisfaction and consumer trust on website loyalty. Information & Management, 43(1), 1-14. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2005.01.002

Gil-Garcia, J. R., & Martinez-Moyano, I. J. (2007). Understanding the evolution of e-government: The influence of systems of rules on public sector dynamics. Government Information Quarterly, 24(2), 266-290. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2006.04.005

Gottschalk, P. (2009). Maturity levels for interoperability in digital government. Government . Information Quarterly, 26(1), 75-81.

Hornbæk, K. (2006). Current practice in measuring usability: Challenges to usability studies and research. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 64(2), 79-102. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2005.06.002

Hung, S., Chang, C., Yu, T. (2006). Determinants of user acceptance of the e-Government services: The case of online tax filing and payment system. Government Information Quarterly 23(1) 97-122.

Jamieson, S. 2004. Likert scales: how to (ab) use them. Medical Education, 38, 1212-1218

Leavitt, M. O. y Shneiderman, B. (2006). Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines. In Background and Methodology. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Washington.

Molich, R. & Nielsen, J. (1990). Improving a human-computer dialogue. Communications of the ACM , 33( 3), 338-348

Moon, M.J.(2002). The evolution of e-government among municipalities: Rhetoric or reality. Public Administration Review, 62(4), 424-433

Nielsen, J. 1992. Finding usability problems through heuristic evaluation. Proceedings ACM CHI'92 Conference, Monterey, Mexico, May 3-7.

Nielsen, J. and Mack, R.L. (eds) (1994). Usability Inspection Methods, John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Nakamichi, N., Shima, K., Sakai, M., & Matsumoto, K.-i. (2006). Detecting low usability web pages using quantitative data of users' behavior. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 28th international conference on Software engineering, Shanghai, China.

Norris, D. F., & Moon, M. J. (2005). Advancing E-Government at the Grassroots: Tortoise or Hare? Public Administration Review, 65(1), 64-75. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2005.00431.x

Peng, L. K., Ramaiah, C. K. and Foo, S. (2004). Heuristic-based User Interface Evaluation at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Program: Electronic Library and Information Systems 38 (1): 42-59.

Reddick, C. G. (2005). Citizen interaction with e-government: From the streets to servers? Government Information Quarterly, 22(1), 38-57. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2004.10.003

Tolbert, C., & Mossberger, K. (2003). The effects of e-government on trust and confidence in government. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2003 annual national conference on Digital government research, Boston, MA.




Copyright (c)

Licensed under