Synthesizing e‐government stage models – a meta‐synthesis based on meta‐ethnography approach

Purpose – The growing interest in e‐government raises the question of stages in e‐government development. A few stage models for e‐government have been proposed. Without a common e‐government stage model, different research in e‐government may be based on different stage models. This presents a difficulty in comparing and understanding different research results. In this research, we synthesize the existing e‐government stage models so that there is a common frame of reference for researchers and practitioners in the area. Design/methodology/approach – This research utilizes a qualitative meta‐synthesis methodology to synthesize different e‐government stage models. The meta‐synthesis follows the steps used in meta‐ethnography. Findings – Five different e‐government stage models were used in this research. We translated the stages within different models into one another and developed a new e‐government stage model. The new e‐government stage model has the following five stages: web presence, interaction, transaction, transformation, and e‐democracy. Research limitations/implications – The paper contributes to e‐government theory development. The new five‐stage model provides a synthesized conceptual framework for researchers to evaluate and understand e‐government development. Practical implications – The synthesized e‐government stage model presents a road map for practitioners to follow in their e‐government projects. Originality/value – The research uses an innovative and new research methodology to synthesize the existing research. It is one of the first research in the information systems area to make use of meta‐synthesis approach to consolidate the existing qualitative research. This paper is also one of the one papers to systematically come up with an e‐government stage model.