eGovernment in cities of the knowledge society. An empirical investigation of Smart Cities' governmental websites

In view of the increased popularity of eGovernment as an important aspect of the development of Smart or Informational World Cities, we outline three research questions: (1) What is the state of maturity of eGovernments in Informational World Cities? (2) How good (or poor) is their usability? (3) How do they handle boundary documents? In order to clear up these issues empirically, we formulated an extended criteria model for the quantification of eGovernment maturity, analyzed the average quality of the information architecture of 31 identified Informational World Cities' official websites, and studied the processing of boundary documents, i.e. documents that serve different user groups. Our outcomes indicate that the maturity and usability levels of investigated cities are much differentiated, whereas the implementation of boundary documents in form of detailed information sheets is rather scarce. Considering the maturity of investigated eGovernments, there is still potential for improvement, especially regarding the aspects of communication and transaction services. The differences between the eGovernments' usability standards are substantial and the results are partially suboptimal. Our outcomes indicate that the usability levels retrieved from task-based evaluation are not directly linked to integration of boundary documents into the governmental websites.