Editorial

摘要

The second issue of Vol. 7 of the International Journal of Electronic Governance presents our readership with three research papers which altogether cover different approaches and models to apply for being able to improve the success and acceptance of e-Government projects and services. In the opening paper of the issue, 'A usability evaluation of e-government services: the case of e-deliberation service of Greece', Delopoulos discusses usability problems as barriers to the adoption of e-government service offerings. Based on a combination of methods to evaluate the usability of e-government services, the author develops a questionnaire following HSS web usability guidelines and ISO9241-151 web usability standards and reports on the results of applying this tool to OpenGov.gr, the flagship e-deliberation service currently operating in Greece. As the research findings show, through an expert review of more than 120 usability points of the service in question, in approximately 1/3 of the points inspected some major or minor usability problems have been revealed, which have subsequently been grouped in accordance with Nielsen's Heuristics. As the author argues, the adoption by e-government service developers of similar multi-method approaches for checking usability problems during early design stages could substantially help in improving the usability aspects of the services finally offered to the public.