Whilst it is difficult to quantify past -and often huge- eGovernment investments as inputs into the eGovernment value chain, it is increasingly important to justify spending (and for some public administrations to justify their mere existence) by demonstrating impact, may it be related to effectiveness or efficiency. Today, only about 124 millions Europeans are eGovernment engaged, and 86 millions of Europeans using the internet regularly are non users of eGovernment services. Enhancing take-up remains a policy challenge in the EU at a time when citizens and businesses expect the same level of quality and responsiveness from government services as they experience generally with the private sector.

In our article, we first deal with two sub-dimensions of effectiveness: user satisfaction and administrative burden. We outline challenges eGovernment practitioners are facing when trying to improve the user experience whilst lowering administrative burden. Importantly, we emphasize the need for practitioners to consider that, in practice, the two stated sub-dimensions of effectiveness produce interlinked results in terms of more user-focused eGovernment services. Secondly, we place effectiveness into the wider context of “better government” by trying to interrelate it with the dimension of efficiency.

We argue that there is a need for a more holistic vision on the eGovernment value chain, covering both efficiency and effectiveness. This need is, among certainly numerous factors, generated by: the complementary nature of qualitative and quantitative assessments, mixed policy impacts affecting both efficiency and effectiveness, and the desire of practitioners to thoroughly understand the eGovernment value chain from upstream to downstream.