An overview of scholarly research on public e-services? A meta-analysis of the literature

• We found a strong heterogeneity in the availability of published articles on public e-services across different research domains.
• The number of published articles steadily increased over the last 10 years revealing a growing attention to public e-services field among researchers.
• The largest share of research studies on public e-services published in high impact journals is authored by scholars affiliated to European research institutions.
• Many authors have highlighted a relative scarcity of works applying quantitative research methods to the analysis of public e-services.
• Two main classes of indicators can be singled out in the e-service literature: output indicators and usage indicators.

Public e-services are a broad and growing research field in which scholars and practitioners from different domains are involved. However, the increasing attention devoted to public e-services only partially captures the extreme variety of aspects and implications of the diffusion of information and communication technologies at all levels of public administrations. The paper aims to develop a meta-analysis of the literature on the delivery, diffusion, adoption and impact of public e-services and examines differences in methodologies, approaches and key indicators across five service categories: e-government, e-education, e-health, Infomobility and e-procurement. We examined 751 articles appeared in 2000–2010 in the top international academic journals listed in the SSCI-ISI, as classified in the following fields: Communication, Economics, Education, Environmental Studies, Geography, Health Policy and Services, Information Science and Library Science, Law, Management, Planning and Development, Public Administration, Transportation and Urban Studies. We highlight a significant heterogeneity in scientific production across service categories, indicators used, and affiliation of authors. We also show an increasing diffusion of quantitative methods applied to different research fields which still appears to be constrained by data limitations. The overall picture emerging from the analysis is one characterized by largely unexplored domains as well as scarcely analyzed issues both across and within individual service categories. Thus many research opportunities seem to emerge and need to be exploited from different disciplinary perspectives in this field of analysis.