A Framework for Assessing E-services Websites of Iranian Reseach Centers

Research Centers are considered as one of the most important hubs for developing scientific achievements in different spheres, therefore they are expected to provide high quality e-services to meet researcher’s demands. Since website is the primary step of e-services development, constant assessment of website make a strong contribution into enhancing e-services quality. In this paper, a framework is proposed to assess e-services websites. The most effective indexes for assessing e-services websites are extracted as: security, trust, responsiveness quality, content, citizen’s participation, usability, website design, maintenance and supporting and services. The extracted indexes are assigned weight using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Due to existed uncertainty in some of the indexes, fuzzy sets theory is applied to model problem’s ambiguity. The data are collected from 20 experts in the sphere of e-government and information technology by conducting pairwise comparison questionnaire. Finally, proposed framework is applied to assess the readiness of 8 Iranian research centers e-services websites and some useful recommendations are suggested to improve website quality. Iran telecommunication Research Center (ITRC) and NIGEB has got highest and lowest readiness respectively.