Digital inequalities' impact on progressive stages of e-government development

This article aims to study digital inequalities' effect in the uptake of governmental online services corresponding to progressive stages of e-government development. Whereas digital divide literature signals that the use and outcomes of governmental online services are stratified, there is less compelling evidence regarding how socioeconomic inequalities affect different types of C2G interactions. Several e-government development typologies assume that as services improve, the types of interactions they enable become more complex. This study analyses how similar socioeconomic and digital attributes affect three different stages of e-government development (enhanced, interactive and transactional) by assessing the chances of Internet users to a) search for information, b) download files, forms or receipts, and c) pay online for services. We hypothesize that the effects of digital disparities are progressive on successive more complex types on C2G interactions. Analyses were conducted using a nationally representative sample of 18 years and older Uruguayan Internet users, based on the EUTIC 2016 survey. Three binary logistic models are fitted (one per type of interaction), taking into account demographics, socioeconomic attributes and digital divides. Findings show that adults tend to engage more in all interactions than young and older people, but the gender divide is only significant for information seeking. Evidence for our hypotheses as a whole was inconsistent. On one hand the effect of education is significant in the enhanced and interactive levels only, whereas -on the other and in line with our hypothesis-income is statistically relevant only for the transactional stage. Regarding digital divide, Internet seniority is significant for the first two stages and frequency of use (daily) is not for any of them. The effect of digital skills is one of the strongest and more stable predictors across the three C2G activities, slightly increasing its affect with for each stage of e-government development. The document ends stressing the need of evidence-informed public policies that consider how the complexity of the services interact with social and digital disparities to improve its uptake. Nonetheless, digital literacy appears to be the most critical factor for e-government uptake as a whole.