What Influences Citizens' Expectations towards Digital Government? An Exploratory Survey

Purpose - Governments around the world engage in digitalization projects to improve their internal functioning and the delivery of information and services to their users, including citizens. There are several ways to implement this digitalization and, therefore, different roles for citizens, who can be considered as customers, as participants, and as coproducers in a digital government.
Design/methodology/approach - We conducted a exploratory survey to understand citizens' expectations in Belgium. We examined which factors among age, gender, occupation, education, digital literacy, government level, and frequency of use of other e-services influence these expectations.
Findings - Through to a statistical analysis conducted on data collected from 203 citizens, we identify 25 relationships between the aforementioned factors and the expectations. We have identied relationships between expectations and government level, gender, age, occupation, use frequency of other e-services, and digital literacy. On the other hand, we found no influence for the education level and for working in an administration.
Originality - No previous work has asked directly to citizens which role they would be willing to take and, consequently, what expectations they have towards digital government. We contribute a usable survey instrument to achieve this and we have demonstrated how it can be used to collect data from citizens. In doing so, we contributed valuable findings supporting Belgian policy-makers in developing digital government policies that are aligned with citizens' expectations.
Research limitations/implications - This study contributes to the research eld by
providing insights into what citizens expect from digital government and exploring several relationships to be investigated in further research.