Assessment tool for e-services take-up (ATEST): a small Island states context

e-Services help in fostering the development of a knowledge society as more citizens and businesses can access, adopt and use government services through online channels. Existing evidence in Mauritius, however, shows low usage of online government services. The goal of this research consisted of developing a framework to guide government agencies in Mauritius in increasing the likelihood of success and uptake of e-Services. This study uses a novel approach, i.e. the Real-Time Delphi method based on a consensus of expert opinions as the main research method to identify critical success factors influencing the user uptake of e-Services. Moreover, it not only proposes a framework as a solution but also operationalises the framework into a tool which can be used in practice to predict the likelihood of take-up of an e-Service implemented by a Government agency. Additionally, the tool was made flexible so that it can be used not only in the Mauritian context but can also be adapted to reflect the context of other countries. Government policy-makers can leverage on the developed framework to formulate better policies and guidelines for the successful take-up of online public services in Mauritius. Furthermore, e-Service owners can use the tool to evaluate their e-Service strategy and identify priority areas where resources and effort have to be dedicated so that their e-Services can be successfully adopted and used by citizens. The validity and effectiveness of the tool was evaluated using existing e-Services in Mauritius having varying user uptake and the results were found to reflect to a great extent the prevailing uptake situation of existing e-Services.