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Identifying User Costs
Understanding, quantifying and planning for costs to users can help ensure that e-Government benefits outweigh costs and are perceived as adding value. So far, however overall there appears to be very little data on the costs of e-Government from the perspective of the citizen or business. Conceptually, general costs for users include computer hardware and software, Internet and telecommunications access fees, e-Government service fees, and the cost of learning how to use online services effectively.
In February 2006, the OECD conducted an expert seminar on the cost and benefit analysis of e-government in which it identified but did not quantify the following categories of costs to users:
See OECD e-Government Project, “Proposed Outline for Assessing e-Government Benefits” (2006). For the vast majority of users in developing countries that use cyber-cafes or public ICT centers, there will be service fees and travel time and expense required to reach the access centers.
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In February 2006, the OECD conducted an expert seminar on the cost and benefit analysis of e-government in which it identified but did not quantify the following categories of costs to users:
- Direct costs
- Computer hardware and software
- Computer operations and maintenance
- Telecoms and Web access charges
- IT training and support
- Digital signature setup
- Printing forms and information
- Time factors
- Web search
- Reading time
- E-mail and form completion
- Phone time
See OECD e-Government Project, “Proposed Outline for Assessing e-Government Benefits” (2006). For the vast majority of users in developing countries that use cyber-cafes or public ICT centers, there will be service fees and travel time and expense required to reach the access centers.
<<Previous: Identifying Government Costs Next: Identifying Benefits>>