Factors Influencing the Business Value of e-Government Services for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises

The aim of the current paper is to investigate the factors that influence the use of e-governmentservices by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Estonia and Germany and toidentify the main benefits for users of e-government services. Based on the technological,organisational, and inter-organisational perspectives and relevant theories, the authors havedeveloped a research model depicting relations between the business value of e-governmentservices and the factors that influence it. The model was tested contributing to themethodology of evaluating the relations between model variables. The results point out keyfactors for e-government service providers which should be addressed in order to betterunderstand the benefits as seen by SMEs, having used e-government services. Distinguishingthe business value (benefits) of e-government services both inside and outside the enterprise,a stronger value was found outside the enterprise, affected mostly by external pressure fromcompetitors and industry sources. Service quality appeared to have a direct impact on userbenefits, in contrast to the results of previous research. The administrative burden has theweakest influence in both countries. The research is also valuable for practical use as a deeperunderstanding of the influencing factors in contributing to the e-government strategieswithin the associated countries.