Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Measuring E-government Efficiency pp 45–74Cite as

Measuring Usability to Improve the Efficiency of Electronic Signature-Based e-Government Solutions

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Public Administration and Information Technology ((PAIT,volume 5))

Abstract

Usability and security are crucial requirements of efficient e-Government services and applications. Given security requirements are mostly met by integration of approved cryptographic methods such as two-factor authentication and qualified electronic signatures. Integration of these technologies into e-Government applications usually introduces additional complexity and often affects the usability of these solutions. So far, research on usability as efficiency-measuring instrument in e-Government has primarily focused on the evaluation of e-Government Web sites only. Usability issues raised by the integration of security-enhancing technologies into e-Government applications have not been considered in detail yet. We filled this gap by conducting a usability analysis of three core components of the Austrian e-Government infrastructure to improve efficiency in this domain. The evaluated components act as middleware and facilitate integration of e-ID and e-Signature tokens such as smart cards and mobile phones into e-Government applications. We have assessed the usability and perceived security of these middleware components by means of a thinking-aloud test with 20 test users. This chapter introduces the evaluated components, discusses the followed methodology, and presents obtained results of the conducted usability test.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    At the present time, this Directive is still the basis for electronic signatures across Europe. However, the European Commission is currently working on a new proposal for a regulation (EU Parliament and Council 2012).

  2. 2.

    Two-factor authentication defines an authentication approach requiring the presentation of two different authentication factors, e.g., something the user possesses (e.g., smart card) and something the user knows (e.g., password).

  3. 3.

    In this context, a middleware constitutes an intermediary layer between the application and the underlying CC implementation. The middleware thereby hides CC-implementation specifics and provides easy access to CC functionality for the application.

  4. 4.

    http://www.pcscworkgroup.com

  5. 5.

    http://www.a-trust.at/info.aspx?ch=2&lang=GE&node=733

  6. 6.

    http://www.itsolution.at/trustDesk-basic.html

  7. 7.

    https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/mocca/home

  8. 8.

    A one-time password constitutes a password which is valid for one transaction or one login only.

  9. 9.

    http://www.techsmith.com/morae.html

  10. 10.

    This typical demo e-Government application consists of filling out a form and signing it (using a CCS) afterwards.

  11. 11.

    Therefore, the test users have been requested to execute Tasks T1, T2, and T3 beforehand.

  12. 12.

    http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/index-jsp-136112.html

  13. 13.

    Note that we were forced to schedule the evaluation of the Mobile Phone Signature after evaluation of the two smart card-based CCS implementations. This was due to the fact that the activation process of the Mobile Phone Signature was part of the usability test (Task T4). Since the activation process required a Citizen Card-based user authentication, either MOCCA Local or MOCCA Online was required to activate the Mobile Phone Signature.

  14. 14.

    This was due to the fact that a test instance of MOCCA Online has been used during the tests. The Java Applet of this test instance was signed with a test certificate only.

  15. 15.

    According to Nielsen (2013), a group of five people is fully sufficient for such tests (this number has been also reached for each subgroup of the test users).

References

  • Altameem T, Zairi M, Alshawi S (2006) Critical success factors of e-Government: a proposed model for e-Government implementation. Innovations in Information Technology, Dubai, pp 1–5. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4085489&tag=1

  • Boslaugh S, Watters PA (2008) Statistics in a nutshell, vol 54. O’Reilly, Sebastopol

    Google Scholar 

  • Centner M, Orthacker C, Bauer W (2010) Minimal-footprint middleware for the creation of qualified signatures. In: Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (ed) Proceedings of the 6th international conference on web information systems and technologies. INSTICC—Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication, Portugal, pp 64–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Chircu AM, Hae-Dong Lee D (2005) E-government: key success factors for value discovery and realisation. Int J Electron Govern 2(1):11–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • EU Parliament and Council (2000) Directive 1999/93/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 1999 on a community framework for electronic signatures. Off J Eur Commun L 013:12–20

    Google Scholar 

  • EU Parliament and Council (2012) Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market/*COM/2012/0238 final—2012/0146 (COD)

    Google Scholar 

  • Frokjaer E, Hertzum M, Hornbaek K (2000) Measuring usability: are effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction really correlated? Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, The Hague, The Netherlands, pp 345–352

    Google Scholar 

  • Garcia ACB, Maciel C, Pinto FB (2005) A quality inspection method to evaluate e-Government sites. Electronic government fourth international conference, EGOV, vol 3591, pp 198–209

    Google Scholar 

  • Geetha KT, Malarvizhi V (2010) Acceptance of e-Banking among customers (an empirical investigation in India). J Manag Sci 2(1). ISSN: 2249–1260

    Google Scholar 

  • Gil-Garcia JR (2007) Exploring e-government benefits and success factors, encyclopedia of digital government. IGI Global, Hershey, pp 803–811

    Google Scholar 

  • Gil-García JR, Pardo TA (2005) E-government success factors: mapping practical tools to theoretical foundations. Govern Inform Q 22(2):187–216

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hollosi A, Karlinger G, Rössler T, Centner M (2008) The Austrian citizen card. http://www.buergerkarte.at/konzept/securitylayer/spezifikation/20080220/

  • Howcroft B, Hamilton R, Heder P (2002) Consumer attitude and the usage and adoption of home-based banking in the United Kingdom. Int J Bank Market 20(3):111–121

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hung S-Y, Chang C-M, Kuo S-R (2013) User acceptance of mobile e-government services: an empirical study. Govern Inform Q 30(1):33–44. ISSN: 0740-624X, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2012.07.008

  • Kubicek H (2011) Akzeptanzprobleme sicherer elektronischer Identitäten: Ergebnisse einer vergleichenden Untersuchung in acht Ländern, pp 43–47

    Google Scholar 

  • Leitold H, Hollosi A, Posch R. (2002) Security architecture of the Austrian Citizen Card concept. In: Proceedings of the 18th annual computer security applications conference, ACSAC ‘02, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, pp 391–400

    Google Scholar 

  • Ma H-YT, Zaphiris P (2003) The usability and content accessibility of the e-government in the UK. In: Stephanidis C (ed) Universal access in HCI, vol 2007. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, USA, pp 760–764

    Google Scholar 

  • Nielsen J (2013) Why you only need to test with 5 users. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test-with-5-users/

  • Norris P (2003) Digital divide: civic engagement, information poverty, and the Internet worldwide. Prometheus 21(3):1–320

    Google Scholar 

  • Orthacker C, Zefferer T (2011) Accessibility challenges in e-Government: an Austrian experience. In: Houlden N, Oram D, Picking R, Cunningham S, Grout V (eds) Proceedings of the fourth international conference on internet technologies and applications (ITA 11), Centre for Applied Internet Research (CAIR), Glyndŵr University, Wrexham, UK, pp 221–228

    Google Scholar 

  • Orthacker C, Centner M, Kittl C (2010) Qualified mobile server signature. Proceedings of the 25th TC 11 international information security conference, SEC 2010

    Google Scholar 

  • Schultz EE, Proctor RW, Lien MC, Salvendy G (2001) Usability and security an appraisal of usability issues in information security methods. Comput Secur 20(7):620–634

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Siddhartha A (2008) National e-ID card schemes: a European overview. Inf Secur Tech Rep 13(2):46–53

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sørum H (2011) An empirical investigation of user involvement, website quality and perceived user satisfaction in eGovernment environments. Proceedings of the second international conference on electronic government and the information systems perspective, EGOVIS ’11. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 122–134

    Google Scholar 

  • White H, Nteli F (2004) Internet banking in the UK: why are there not more customers. J Financ Serv Market 9:49–57

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zavareh FB, Ariff MSM, Jusoh A, Zakuan N, Bahari AZ, Ashourian M (2012) E-service quality dimensions and their effects on E-customer satisfaction in internet banking services. Procedia Soc Behav Sci 40:441–445, ISSN: 1877–0428

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Applied Information Processing and Communications, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 16a, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Thomas Zefferer, Vesna Krnjic, Klaus Stranacher & Bernd Zwattendorfer

Authors
  1. Thomas Zefferer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Vesna Krnjic
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Klaus Stranacher
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Bernd Zwattendorfer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Zefferer .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Granada, Granada, Granada, Spain

    Manuel Pedro Rodríguez-Bolívar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Zefferer, T., Krnjic, V., Stranacher, K., Zwattendorfer, B. (2014). Measuring Usability to Improve the Efficiency of Electronic Signature-Based e-Government Solutions. In: Rodríguez-Bolívar, M. (eds) Measuring E-government Efficiency. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 5. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9982-4_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation