Assessing the web-portal type of eGovernment structures and measuring their socio-economic impact on the French Metropolitan Park

Abstract

The use of eGovernment structures is becoming increasingly popular among public agencies due to the democratization of the Internet Communication Technologies (ICTs). Its application and impact at the public metropolitan level are however not widely studied, especially in France where the concept of the metropolis is relatively new. This research aims at assessing the degree of eGovernment development in the French Metropolitan Park, by developing an eGovernment Development Score (eGDS) focused on web-portal analysis while contributing to the comprehension of the relation between the quality of eGovernment structures and the economic development based upon a set of pre-selected economic indicators. The development of the eGDS illustrated disparities in term of eGovernment development between the metropolises studied, some group of cases performed better than others, indicating room for improvement. To better understand the impact of eGovernment on the economic indicators selected, a statistical analysis has been conducted. While the application of the statistical analysis pointed at several degrees of correlation and some causal relationships between the variables and eGDS, it weakly supports the claims of the existing literature, indicating that further investigations shall be conducted. The embryonic stage of the eGovernment structure of French metropolises, explains the mild causality between the development of the eGovernment structure and the economic variables selected. Preliminary relationships have however been observed between the eGDS and the youth unemployment rate, the dynamism for employment and the entrepreneurship satisfaction. This work provides a theoretical and empirical basis for future research willing to understand the evolution of the electronic government structure of the French Metropolitan Park.