Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Panagiotis Manolitzas et al.
to Governement-G2G) the possibilities provided via the completed interconnection and the
interdepartmental collaborations for communication among the public services. An additional category
is government-to-employee, which is used to describe the connection that can be established among
people within the government through the use of computers and the Internet (Blakemore & Dutton,
2003; ESCWA 2003), which is also referred by (Evans & Yen 2006) as intra-government (Nagi &
Hamdan 2009).
Nowdays a crucial factor from the implementation and the development of an eGovernment project is
the web site that will be constructed. Over the last ten years, all governments are trying to develop
complex information systems in order to offer valuable electronic services to the citizens. The last five
years many citizens prefer to communicate and interact with the central government via the
government portals. In Greece the public sector created a centralized web portal (www.ermis.gov.gr)
so as to the services provided to gain added value and to benefit users (citizens and enterprises). The
governmental Portal provides through a central point completed briefing in the citizens and the
enterprises with regard to all their transactions with the Public Administration (natural or electronic), as
well as selected services of Electronic Transactions.
During last years many web site evaluation methodologies have been proposed. For example many
researchers used the servqual method (Parasuraman et al, 1988) in order to measure the quality of a
website. Other researchers like Iwaarden et al (2004) presented a survey amongst students at
Northeastern and Erasmus Universities in order to identify the most important quality aspects in the
design and use of websites. The SERVQUAL model proposes a universal set of quality dimensions
(tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy), although there is some criticism for
the results of this scale (Grigoroudis et al 2008). Another model that has been widely used is the
EUCS (end-user computing satisfaction). This model has been tested and validated in various
research settings. The results of this model have shown that end user computer satisfaction varied
across cultures and may mean differently from one group to another (Deng et al, 2008). Also, other
approaches have been developed for the evaluation of websites. These deal with site usability and
design, content, quality and user satisfaction. Huizingh (2000) determined how different groups of
companies are actually using the Web and their sites are structured. To provide focus to his study, he
developed a framework with two essential aspects of Web sites: content and design. He analyzed
different groups of sites to gain understanding how the new tools are used by various companies. The
research also showed that larger web sites seem to be richer and more advanced. Aladwani and
Palvia (2002) developed a multidimensional scale for measuring user-perceived web quality. The
results of the two-phased investigation uncovered four dimensions of perceived web quality (technical
adequacy, specific content, content quality, and appearance) and provided evidence for the
psychometric properties of the 25-item instrument (Robbins & Stylianou 2003). On the other hand
Raquel (2001) used protocol analysis to measure the usability of a web site. For the purpose of this
research about 15 usability principles and 3 evaluation parameters were used as a framework to
analyze the verbal protocols of a sample of users. The results of the survey underscored the
importance of two crucial usability goals for commercial web sites: clear path to products and
transparency of the ordering process. In this study will be used a multicriteria methodology in order to
examine the users satisfaction from an electronic government site.
3. The MUSA method
The MUSA (Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis) method is a multicriteria preference disaggregation
analysis technique (Grigoroudis & Siskos 2002; Siskos et al 1998). Assuming that the customers’
global satisfaction depends on a set of criteria representing service characteristic dimensions, the
main objective of the MUSA method is the aggregation of individual judgements into a collective value
function (Kyriazopoulos et al 2007). The method is an ordinal regression based approach used for the
assessment of a set of collective satisfaction functions in such a way that the global satisfaction
criterion becomes as consistent as possible with customers’ judgements (kyriazopoulos et al 2007).
According to the methodology of the model the required data are collected via a questionnaire. The
customer evaluates the provided services and expresses his/her judgements, namely their global
satisfaction and his/her satisfaction with regard to the set of discrete criteria (Mihelis et al, 2001). A
detailed presentation of the mathematical formula of the MUSA method can be found in (Grigoroudis
& Siskos 2002, Siskos Yet al 1998).
The MUSA model combines the weights and the average satisfaction indices in order to create the
action diagrams (figure 1). These diagrams help the user or the decision maker to determine
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