ISSN: 2222-6990
Open access
Developing countries worldwide are increasingly adopting e-government initiatives to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of public service delivery. Despite limited financial resources, governments are implementing various strategies to meet citizens’ dynamic demand, often influenced by the seamless digital experiences offered by the private sector. However, the pursuit of fully online, end-to-end (E2E) e-government services is frequently hindered by technological, organizational, and regulatory barriers. E2E services refer to fully online public services from the beginning to the end of the process, accessible anytime and anywhere without requiring face-to-face interaction. This paper presents a narrative review to explore citizen-centric design elements in e-government for developing effective public service delivery systems that enhance user convenience and minimize the need for in-person visits to government offices. A literature search on different databases was conducted, including Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, using determined keywords and filtering criteria were included. The review highlights three overarching themes which are challenges of E2E services implementation, innovation in e-government practices, and essential design characteristics for E2E service delivery. The implementation of seamless e-government services in developing countries faces several challenges. However, designing end-to-end services can potentially open new venues for enhancing the service engagement journey for citizens while engaging with the public sector.
Alter, S. (2013). Work system theory: Overview of core concepts, extensions, and challenges for the future.
Aoki, N., Tay, M., & Rawat, S. (2024). Whole-of-government and joined-up government: A systematic literature review. June 2023, 733–752. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12949
Asian Productivity Organization. (2021). Digitalization of public service delivery in Asia.
Bharosa, N., Meijer, K., & van der Voort, H. (2020). Innovation in public service design: Developing a co-creation tool for public service innovation journeys. In S.-J. Eom & J. Lee (Eds.), 21st Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2020) (pp. 275–284). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3396956.3396981
Butt, N., Warraich, N. F., & Tahira, M. (2019). Development level of electronic government services an empirical study of E-government websites in Pakistan. Global Knowledge Memory and Communication, 68(1–2), 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-05-2018-0045
Chan, F. K. Y., Thong, J. Y. L., Brown, S. A., & Venkatesh, V. (2021). Service design and citizen satisfaction with E-Government services: A multidimensional perspective. Public Administration Review, 81(5), 874–894. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13308
Chan, F. K. Y., Thong, J. Y. L., Brown, S. A., & Venkatesh, V. (2025). Design characteristics and service experience with e-government services: A public value perspective. International Journal of Information Management, 80(December 2023), 102834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2024.102834
Chen, P., & Chou, S.-C. (2015). Using service design tool and qualitative research method to assist the E-Government service process redesign: A case study of the taxation service process in Taiwan. Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, 15.
Deloitte. (2019). Service design in government. In Deloitte Center for Government Insights. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.
Deloitte. (2023). The digital citizen global survey 2023. Digitalization of public service delivery in Asia. (n.d.).
Downe, L. (2020). Good services. BIS Publishers.
DPER. (2022). Designing our public services. Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, 32.
Equey, C., Priftis, A., Trabichet, J. P., & Hutzli, V. (2024). Designing a digital citizen-centered service. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 202(October 2023), 123280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123280
Gao, X., Song, Y., & Zhu, X. (2013). Integration and coordination: Advancing China’s fragmented e-government to holistic governance. Government Information Quarterly, 30(2), 173–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2012.12.003
Glyptis, L., Christofi, M., Vrontis, D., Giudice, M. Del, Dimitriou, S., & Michael, P. (2020). E-Government implementation challenges in small countries: The project manager’s perspective. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2019.119880
Gupta, P., Sachan, A., & Kumar, R. (2020). Different stages of the e-service delivery system process: belief–attitude–intention framework. International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, 48(7), 687–706. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJRDM-01-2019-0014
Gusenbauer, M. (2020). Which academic search systems are suitable for systematic reviews or meta-analyses? Evaluating retrieval qualities of Google Scholar, PubMed, and 26 other resources. September 2019, 181–217. https://doi.org/10.1002/jrsm.1378
Huque, A. S., & Ferdous, J. (2024). Electronic public service delivery: Progress and challenges in Bangladesh. Public Administration and Policy, 27(1), 19–30. https://doi.org/10.1108/PAP-06-2023-0090
Idowu Lamid, L., Ali Ibrahim, I., Inuwa Abdullahi, K., & Gambo Abdullahi, U. (2021). A framework for digital government transformation performance assessment and toolkit for developing countries. In E. N. Loukis (Ed.), 14th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV 2021) (pp. 203–215). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3494193.3494222
Jiang, L. (Alice), Yang, Z., & Jun, M. (2013). Measuring consumer perceptions of online shopping convenience. Journal of Service Management, 24(2), 191–214. https://doi.org/10.1108/09564231311323962
Jibladze, M., Manvelidze, I., Zoidze, I., & Phartenadze, G. (2024). E-governance under the framework of open governance in Georgia: current situation, problems and opportunities. Public Administration and Policy, 27(2), 193–205. https://doi.org/10.1108/PAP-05-2023-0074
Joshi, P. R., & Islam, S. (2018). E-government maturity model for sustainable E-government services from the perspective of developing countries. Sustainability (Switzerland), 10(6). https://doi.org/10.3390/su10061882
Kamaruddin, K. A., & Noor, N. L. M. (2017). Citizen-centric demand model for transformational government systems. 21st Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS 2017), [1-13].
Khan, A., & Krishnan, S. (2021). Citizen engagement in co-creation of e-government services: A process theory view from a meta-synthesis approach. Internet Research, 31(4), 1318–1375. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-03-2020-0116
Kitchenham, B., & Charters, S. (2007). Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering.
Li, Y., & Shang, H. (2020). Service quality, perceived value, and citizens’ continuous-use intention regarding e-government: Empirical evidence from China. Information and Management, 57(3), 103197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2019.103197
Lindgren, I., Melin, U., & Sæbø, Ø. (2021). What is e-government? Introducing a work system framework for understanding e-government. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 48, 503–522. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.04842
Liu, B., Chen, T., Jia, P., & Wang, L. (2020). Effective public service delivery supported by time-decayed Bayesian personalized ranking. Knowledge-Based Systems, 206, 106376 [1-10]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2020.106376
Lopes, N. V., & Dhaou, S. Ben. (2018). Public service delivery framework: Case of Canada, China and Estonia. ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, 101–110. https://doi.org/10.1145/3209415.3209489
MAMPU. (2022a). Panduan katalong perkhidmatan Kerajaan.
MAMPU. (2022b). Taklimat perkhidmatan End-To-End (E2E) Sektor Awam.
Mbano, G. M., Mwangakala, H. A., Shao, D., Alexopoulos, C., & Saxena, S. (2025). Improvising e-services in Tanzanian public service delivery: model proposal and validation. Foresight, January. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-02-2024-0034
Monteiro, M. de S., Batista, G. O. da S., & Salgado, L. C. de C. (2023). Investigating usability pitfalls in Brazilian and Foreign governmental chatbots. Journal on Interactive Systems, 14(1), 331–340. https://doi.org/10.5753/jis.2023.3104
Nnaji, I. L., Ukeje, I. O., Maduekwe, E., Iteshi, C. V., & Ndukwe, C. (2023). Electronic governance and public service delivery challenges. In Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance (pp. 1–12). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_4377-1
Nusir, M. (2020). Government digital service Co-design: Concepts to collaboration tools. ICETE 2020 - Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications, 2(Icete), 61–70. https://doi.org/10.5220/0009956900610070
OECD. (2020). Embracing Innovation in Government: Seamless Government (Issue 112).
Osah, J., & Pade-Khene, C. (2020). E-government strategy formulation in resource-constrained local government in South Africa. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 17(4), 426–451. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2020.1715907
Paradkar, S. S. (2021). eGovernment integration framework for fragmented systems. International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, 9(1), 51–55. https://doi.org/10.26438/ijcse/v9i1.5155
Paul, S., & Das, S. (2020). Accessibility and usability analysis of Indian e-government websites. Universal Access in the Information Society, 19(4), 949–957. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-019-00704-8
Polaine, A., Lovlie, L., & Reason, B. (2013). Service design from insight to implementation. Rosenfeld Media.
Saltzer, J. H., Reed, D. P., & Clark, D. D. (1984). End-to-end arguments in system design. ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), 2(4), 277–288. https://doi.org/10.1145/357401.357402
Sangolt, M. S., & Keitsch, M. (2016). Service design in digitization of governmental services. Proceedings of NordDesign 2016.
Scholta, H., Halsbenning, S., Distel, B., & Becker, J. (2020). Walking a mile in their shoes—a citizen journey to explore public service delivery from the citizen perspective. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics): Vol. 12219 LNCS. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57599-1_13
Scholta, H., Mertens, W., Kowalkiewicz, M., & Becker, J. (2019). From one-stop shop to no-stop shop: An e-government stage model. Government Information Quarterly, 36(1), 11–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.11.010
Shibambu, A., & Ngoepe, M. (2024). Enhancing service delivery through digital transformation in the public sector in South Africa. Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, 74(11), 63–76. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-12-2023-0476
Siddiquee, N. A., & Mohamed, M. Z. (2020). E-Government and Transformation of Service Delivery in Malaysia. In M. Khosrow-Pour, S. Clarke, M. E. Jennex, & A.-V. Anttiroiko (Eds.), Open Government: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1606–1622). IGI Global.
State Government of Victoria. (2018). Designing better government information and services: A service design tookit for government.
Stickdorn, Marc., & Schneider, J. (2011). This is service design thinking: Basics - tools - cases. BIS Publishers.
Tiwari, A. A., Gupta, S., Zamani, E. D., Mittal, N., & Agarwal, R. (2023). An overarching conceptual framework for ICT-enabled responsive governance. Information Systems Frontiers, 0123456789. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-023-10415-4
Twizeyimana, J. D., & Andersson, A. (2019). The public value of E-Government – A literature review. Government Information Quarterly, 36(2), 167–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.01.001
United Nations. (2022). E-Government survey 2022.
Yin. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design and methods.
Zhang, Y., & Kimathi, F. A. (2022). Exploring the stages of E-government development from public value perspective. Technology in Society, 69(n/a), [1-11] 101942. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.101942
Othman, N. Z., & Hussin, A. R. C. (2025). A Narrative Review on Designing End-to-End (E2E) Services for E-Government in Developing Countries. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 15(12), 1890–1904.
Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s)
Published by HRMARS (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode