An investigation of e-government progress in Oman: A survey of public sector workers

E-government has become increasingly pervasive in modern society and it has emerged as an effective means of delivering government services to citizens. While most early e-government efforts were concentrated on developed countries, in the recent past, it has also become popular in many developing countries. Most notably are the Middle Eastern countries that have continued to invest significantly into e-government initiatives in the last five years; the Sultanate of Oman is one such example. However, although large investments have been made since 2003 to facilitate the implementation of electronic services in the public sector in Oman, only limited progress has been made in terms of realising fully functional e-government. The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that are currently influencing the development and implementation of e-government in Oman using a quantitative survey-based empirical study in three key public service agencies in Muscat, the capital of Oman. The research identified ten different factors that were influencing the progress of the national e-government project, e-Oman, from the viewpoint of government employees. The most salient of these factors was the Omani IT workforce capability and the citizens' trust and confidence in using e-services

COBRA framework to evaluate e-government services: A citizen-centric perspective

E-government services involve many stakeholders who have different objectives that can have an impact on success. Among these stakeholders, citizens are the primary stakeholders of government activities. Accordingly, their satisfaction plays an important role in e-government success. Although several models have been proposed to assess the success of e-government services through measuring users' satisfaction levels, they fail to provide a comprehensive evaluation model. This study provides an insight and critical analysis of the extant literature to identify the most critical factors and their manifested variables for user satisfaction in the provision of e-government services. The various manifested variables are then grouped into a new quantitative analysis framework consisting of four main constructs: cost; benefit; risk and opportunity (COBRA) by analogy to the well-known SWOT qualitative analysis framework. The COBRA measurement scale is developed, tested, refined and validated on a sample group of e-government service users in Turkey. A structured equation model is used to establish relationships among the identified constructs, associated variables and users' satisfaction. The results confirm that COBRA framework is a useful approach for evaluating the success of e-government services from citizens' perspective and it can be generalised to other perspectives and measurement contexts. Crown Copyright © 2014.PIAP-GA-2008-230658) from the European Union Framework Program and another grant (NPRP 09-1023-5-158) from the Qatar National Research Fund (amember of Qatar Foundation

E-Government Applications And Methodologies: Turkey on the E-Government Way

The recent changes in the technology, especially the use of Internet and the World Wide Web resulted in a new way of doing business for the governments. Governments worldwide face with the challenge of transformation and the need to reinvent government systems, which are based to deliver more efficient and cost effective services for the citizens. The developments and the studies in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) resulted in E-Government projects and applications. This paper tries to analyze E-Government projects by analyzing their methodologies and strategies; and it is mainly based on the underlying key points in success stories. Also within this paper the reader will get information on E-Government projects in Turkey, successes and failures, IT vision of the administrations and the future plans.

Innovative management practices and their impact on local e-government performance: The Turkish provincial municipalities

Contrary to popular belief which sees the government as reactive and resistant to change, the increasing emergence of innovative ideas particularly in the field of local services yielded a wide range of interactions. This was due to address new policy challenges, improve productivity, better serve and more fully engage a changing citizenry. Practicing new ideas triggered more innovativeness. The paradigm of NPM and later the phenomenon of e-government are well studied. However, the relationship among innovative management practices and their impact on e-government performances require a deeper understanding. Thus, our paper seeks to shed some light on this issue by exploring what type of local services were transformed online and at what level. Then, in accordance with the organizational dynamics of innovation, we developed hypotheses to inquire the impact of innovative management practices on local e-government performance of Turkish provinces. Mann-Whitney U statistics were carried out to find out which of the groups that were statistically significant different from one another. The results indicated significant findings. The provincial local governments which adopted innovative management practices tend to have higher local e-government performances.Local e-governments, Turkish provinces, new public management, public innovation, Turkey

ICT diffusion and the digital divide in tourism: Kazakhstan perspective

No abstract available

An examination of the suitability of a UK PFI model within the Czech Republic, the Republic of Ireland, Palestine (Gaza-West Bank), Portugal and Turkey

Purpose – The objective of this research is to identify the cross-cultural similarities and differences of the implementation of the UK PFI procurement process in different contexts. Design/methodology/approach – The research methodology adopted was the SLEEPT approach. The identified features are examined from source material of various projects within the stated nations. A Delphic approach of confirmation by national collaborators from each country is utilised. Confirming and disaffirming features are examined utilising exogenous cultural drivers. Findings – The conclusion of this research identifies cross-cultural features of six different cultures presented as a “cultural compass” which will inform the development of future private finance initiative (PFI)/public private partnership (PPP) projects. The impact of this research will have implications for the appreciation of cultural similarities and differences of national “construction cultures” for effective project delivery of future PFI/PPP projects. Originality/value – This paper offers an approach that can be generalised for adoption by nations considering the introduction of PFI as a procurement process

Global Innovation Policy Index

Ranks fifty-five nations' strategies to boost innovation capacity: policies on trade, scientific research, information and communications technologies, tax, intellectual property, domestic competition, government procurement, and high-skill immigration