Security Versus Usability in E-Government: Insights from the Literature

Most governments establish regulations for the development of digital e-government services, aimed at improving the citizen’s experience and seeking to protect the information handled by those services. The problem is that these regulations do not contemplate a balance between information security and usability of web and mobile services; being that many times, both aspects are ignored in software design considerations. Achieving this balance serves as a component to measure the level of maturity of e-government services, so identifying that both elements are included in the development of web and mobile services is essential to guarantee the success of the joint implementation of e-government and compliance with the aforementioned regulations. In the present study, the different models for measuring the level of balance between safety and usability have been revisited as a review of the state-of-the-art. For this reason, the principles of PICO focused on the Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcomes have been used. The objective of the research is to identify those models that really take stock of both elements, or if they are only ad hoc efforts at the time of making specific developments of e-government applications.