In the last few years Electronic Government has become a worldwide reality that Public Administrations at the National and Local level are dealing with, by either raising a new paradigm of reform and management or sceptically welcoming what they consider a new fad.
Due to the relatively recent development of E-government, though, it is particularly difficult to assume decisions and to shape the process of government adaptation to this phenomenon. In this regard, one main difficulty that Public Administrations are facing is the lack of evidence about results and impacts, both during and after the implementation of E-government projects. This is partly due to the very nature of E-government, which reflects the volatility of technological developments. But also, e-government applications are typically cross-sector ones, complicating the task of disentangling their effects.
Moreover, the early stage can be held accountable for the difficulties in assessing whether or not Public Administrations are guided by a vision of E-government that will turn out to be effective in serving their users’ needs, as well as whether or not Public Administrations are embracing the most convenient process of E-government development. Thereby, the very nature and the present stage of e-government seem to result in the lack of adequate evaluation tools.

In order to tackle this issue, this report first selected the EU Regions as the jurisdictional level to be analysed.
There are, indeed, precise links between European Regions on one hand, and ICT policies, interventions and projects on the other hand. At this level the complexity of national policies and actions is reduced, but, still, Regional policy making is concerned with checking the appropriateness of e-government political/strategic goals against the driving socio-economic needs, resulting in a broader scope of analysis than the local level would have ensured.
At the same time, the features of EU Regional level imply a focus on efficiency and effectiveness indicators, as well as a tension toward managerial practices to monitor and report, in itinere, e-government progress.
Most online public services, indeed, are managed and delivered at the local level. Research on eGovernment implementation found that successful pilot experiments at the local level exist, but there is an invisible barrier preventing their being scaled-up and becoming an important part of mainstream government. This is also due to a gap between National strategic plans for innovation in public services and local bottom-up initiatives, leading to a lack of coordination. The natural level where this coordination could take place is probably the Regional level, as an intermediate level where the balance between efficiency, effectiveness and closeness to public employees and citizens needs could be achieved.

Secondly, for the study two types of evaluation frameworks were selected, namely the assessment of public program theory and the assessment of public program process.
With the aim of defining a framework for the program theory, the report maps E-Government vision and priorities according to international organizations and national governments, accounts for the choice of the Regional level rather than the national or local one as the target for the evaluation, surveys the first E-government assessment tools trying to pinpoint the critical aspects and the main insights that could be usefully applied at the European Regional level and identifies some critical features of E-government evaluation and benchmarking. Finally, a proposal of evaluation and benchmarking of e-government at the European Regional level is presented, including both recommendations on stakeholders identification and the definition of a conceptual framework for e-government theory assessment.
The conceptual framework is schematically presented through the intersection between the focus of institutional, collective and operational choice, and the locus, which is composed by three levels, internal to the public administration, from the public administration to citizens and business and, finally, external to the public administration.

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