Assessing e-government ecosystems for their gender-responsiveness is about:

1. tracking the extent to which the design and roll-out of e-service delivery, e-participation, and connectivity architectures, is gender-inclusive.
2. evaluating the outcomes of e-government interventions, from a gender equality standpoint.

Such assessments are integral for timely and appropriate review and course corrections in e-government systems, towards the effective realisation of the women’s empowerment and gender equality agenda, including the pursuit of Goal 5 of Agenda 2030. However, currently, most countries do not adopt a gender perspective in monitoring and evaluation of e-service delivery, digitally mediated participation, and connectivity architecture. Very few countries maintain sex-disaggregated data on the uptake of e-services and citizen participation in e-government (UNESCAP 2016)1. Similarly, with respect to the connectivity dimension, “...the availability of data sets concerning the ways in which women access and use the Internet is limited, with national statistical systems in many countries lacking the resources to gather sex-disaggregated data” (Broadband Commission’s Working Group on the Gender Digital Divide 2017)2.

A strategic commitment within national statistical machineries to address this gender data gap is a precondition for the effective monitoring and evaluation of e-government systems from a gender perspective.