E‐Government in Global Health Crisis: Comparing the E‐Performance of COVID‐19 Contact Tracing Websites

E‐government is widely acknowledged for its benefits to governments and citizens. However, its effectiveness during crises remains underexplored. During the COVID‐19 pandemic, contact tracing websites were deployed globally to kerb the virus's spread, raising significant controversies about data privacy and security. This study evaluates the performance of e‐government contact tracing websites across 57 countries/regions. Six e‐government dimensions are examined, including (1) transparency, (2) accountability, (3) data security, (4) accessibility, (5) e‐participation and (6) privacy, in a tailor‐made questionnaire. The findings show that the overall performance of e‐government is fair. Countries/regions mostly performed satisfactorily in providing transparency and promising accountability, data security and privacy. However, the commitments of accessibility and e‐participation are evidently weak. The analysis reveals that regime type significantly influences e‐government performance: democratic regimes generally perform better than autocratic ones across most dimensions, except accessibility and e‐participation. The study concludes that higher levels of democracy enhance e‐government performance as demonstrated by evaluations of contact tracing websites. This research provides an original comparative analysis that evaluates: (1) e‐government performance through contact tracing websites, (2) the performance across various countries/regions, and (3) the factors that facilitate e‐government. The contribution is to demonstrate that democracy consistently serves as a key factor in strengthening e‐health management and safeguarding data protection for citizens during global health crises.