Assessing information quality of Bangladesh e-government websites

The purpose of this paper is to assess the information quality of e-government websites by university-education citizens of Bangladesh. It also investigated citizens' demographic and Internet related variables associated with perceived information quality ratings and the validity of the underlying factor structure of information quality dimensions.

An online survey was conducted to assess information quality of e-government websites among a sample of university-educated citizens in Bangladesh. Descriptive statistics were obtained to examine respondents' ratings on information quality of these websites on a five-point Likert scale. A multiple linear regression model was applied to determine the effect of demographic and Internet use variables associated with information quality ratings on e-government websites. Finally, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed to determine the underlying factor structure of information quality dimensions.

The findings revealed that the ratings on most information quality items were close to 4.00 on a five-point scale, indicating a generally high information quality of Bangladesh e-government websites. Out of 20 information quality dimensions, value-added and authority were the two top-rated information quality dimensions while security, completeness, reliability, advertisement, relevance and ease of use were the least rated dimensions. The results of multiple regression suggested that gender, age and the device used for accessing the Internet were significantly associated with information quality of e-government websites. The CFA results indicated that information quality dimensions corroborate the factor structure of information quality dimensions used in earlier studies, although the model fit statistics were not fully validated.

The focus of this study was confined to university-educated citizens in Bangladesh. Therefore, the results of this study may not be generalized to other demographic groups in Bangladesh or elsewhere.

This paper can provide guidelines for developing high-quality, informative and citizen-centric e-government websites and suggest ways on how these websites can be evaluated for information quality.

This study is the first to examine the information quality of e-government websites from the citizens' perspective in Bangladesh. The findings of this paper can assist responsible government agencies in making the websites more informative and useful for a diverse group of users.