Assessment of a Web-Based Water Information System Performance in the Context of Groundwater Governance

Portugal recently faced a severe financial crisis that led to the suspension of funding for water monitoring programmes of the Portuguese National Water Resources Information System (SNIRH). This caused a severe impact as SNIRH and shared databases are considered key mechanisms for sharing water basin, country and international policy and data. The available information and data quickly become outdated as well as incomplete and compromised, due to these financial cuts with evident impact in the operational and analytical mechanisms. Therefore, an assessment of these impacts and the identification of gaps and areas needing development and improvement, according to the fundamentals of OECD principles on water governance was strictly necessary, in order to comply with the substantial role of a national water information system (WIS). This study provided the first performance assessment of a WIS based on the refinement of the updated DeLone and McLean information system success, in the context of groundwater governance. The model consists of five analytical dimensions and the quantification of their relationships was made through the application of structural equations modelling and multiple correspondence analysis. The data for the model was collected through a questionnaire held at a national level. The proposed model proved to produce good reliability estimates and the findings of this research provide important input and implications for the water information systems, and for groundwater management and governance in particular. The paper ends with a discussion on the limitations and areas of improvement that could be addressed in future developments.