E-government research in the United States

•This paper assesses e-government research efforts specific to the United States.•Findings identify gaps in e-government research efforts by topic areas.•Many scholarly publications lack or provide a weak overview of methodologies.•Few studies are theory-based or use multi-method evaluation approaches.•Findings provide recommendations and areas for future research efforts.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to review scholarly publications and assess egovernment research efforts as a field of study specific to the United States e-government environment. Study results reveal that researchers who focus on the U.S. e-government environment assess specific e-government topics at the federal, state, and local levels; however, there are gaps in the research efforts by topic areas and across different levels of government, which indicate opportunities for future areas of research. Results also find that a multitude of methodology approaches are used to assess e-government. Issues, however, exist that include lack of or weak presentations of methodologies in publications, few studies include multi-method evaluation approaches for data collection and analysis efforts, and few studies take a theory-based approach to understanding the U.S. e-government environment.