Are Older Citizens Using the E-Moi portal in Saudi Arabia, Hail City: A Quantitative Study-‹

ICT has been widely exploited as a powerful tool of development and prosperity. Therefore, Governments are increasingly moving their civil products and services online. However, there are several groups within societies that are missing out on government benefits due to no online access or/and knowledge, including the elderly. This research attempts to understand the factors affecting older adults’ adoption and use of e-government in a vicinity of Saudi Arabia. To achieve this, a quantitative method used an online survey questionnaire resulting in 937 completed responses. The findings offer implications for existing literature on e-Government adoption, for practitioners and policy makers

Designing a Comprehensive Framework for e-Government Implementation Success with a Special View of the Case of Saudi Arabia

As a result of the increasing development in the field of Information Systems (IS) in the last decades, new concepts have appeared to serve specific requirements and needs (Smith 2010; Almarabeh and AbuAli 2010). E-government is one of these concepts, which appeared in 1993 (Silva 2006) to become one of the main tools for governments around the world to enhance the services provided by governments and their agencies (Atallah 2001). Investigating the literature shows that there are common issues in all e-government implementation projects which can be summarized as follows: 1) e-government implementation projects in their nature are vast, and usually their success is critical for the country. 2) As the factors affecting the success of the implementation vary from different perspectives such technical, human, and political perspectives, many overlaps and contradictions may appear while maintaining the success factors (West 2006). 3). Despite this verity in the perspectives, e-government implementation project in general should be treated as one unit, and success factors from all perspectives should be considered together in order to have a successful project (Cater et al. 2004). 4) The size of e-government projects and the complexity resulted from perspectives verity have created the need not only for identifying the success factors related to the process of e-government implementation, but also for creating frameworks for managing the implementation process (Chen et al. 2009). In this research, a holistic framework for e-government implementation that considers the complexity of having several perspectives affecting the implementation process during its stages is proposed. We claim that this would solve the expected conflicts that may appear while considering different success factors from different perspectives, and it is supposed to be in compliance with the environment’s situation. Approaching this problem would be an added value to the literature of e-government implementation and the literature of the IS field in general because the claimed holistic framework for e-government implementation is not addressed as an academic research. Also, targeting this problem is distinguished from the sort of problem that a government agency or its consultants would themselves be working on by being a generic framework that fits all countries’ situations, and by considering all perspectives rather than focusing only on delivering the project requirements. In order to achieve this, three artifacts are proposed in this research using Design Science discipline as guidelines for designing these artifacts which are: 1) designing a model represents the success factors for e-government implementation as extracted from the literature, 2) creating a framework for the success process of e-government implementation, and 3) designing a physical instantiation for part of the project of e-government implementation in Saudi Arabia in order to evaluate the proposed framework. The findings of evaluating the proposed framework show tangible improvements in the implementation progress. Because e-government implementation projects are influenced by their environment, the results of this evaluation can be generalized only to other environments similar to Saudi Arabia, and determining the applicability of the proposed framework to other regions is left to future researches

How Have Policy Makers Responded to the Current State of ICT in Schools in Saudi Arabia? A Qualitative Investigation

Previous research into Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Saudi schools has not considered the role of the Ministry of Education or the Education Authority (EA). As a researcher, I decided to study their role in an attempt to understand the current state of ICT in Saudi schools from the perspectives of policy makers from both bodies. The aim of the study resulted in the generation of the following research question: What are the policy makers’ views about the current state of ICT in education in Saudi Arabia? As this research aims to discover and understand the current state of ICT in schools from the views and perspectives of policy makers, a qualitative methodology has been employed and interviews were used to collect the data. In total, five policy makers from both the Ministry of Education in KSA and the local education authority in Ar-Rass city participated. The findings show that the Ministry of Education and the education authority are significant factors in the failure of ICT in schools. The study concludes that, in order to handle issues that affect the successful use of ICT in education, departments of education need to develop their policies, strategies, plans and frameworks

The role of intermediaries in facilitating e-government diffusion in Saudi Arabia

Recent studies of e-government activity have highlighted adoption and diffusion issues as important subjects for rating e-government success. However in developing countries inadequate resources and limited citizens’ capabilities regarding new e-government have resulted in low diffusion and adoption of e-government services. This paper examines the role of intermediaries, which can be played by a third party; in bridging the gap between e-government implementation and social reality, and looks at the roles a third party can add within the e-government services mechanism. This paper uses a case study approach in order to reflect e-government progress within the context of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as one developing country. The result of this paper shows that intermediaries play an important role in the diffusion of e-services in relation to improving the availability, accessibility and enhancing privacy and security

Identifying the relevance of personal values to e-government portals' success: insights from a Delphi study

Most governments around the world have put considerable financial resources into the development of e-government systems. They have been making significant efforts to provide information and services online. However, previous research shows that the rate of adoption and success of e-government systems vary significantly across countries. It is argued here that culture can be an important factor affecting e- government success. This paper aims to explore the relevance of personal values to the e-government success from an individual user’s perspective. The ten basic values identified by Schwartz were used. A Delphi study was carried out with a group of experts to identify the most relevant personal values to the e-government success from an individual’s point of view. The findings suggest that four of the ten values, namely Self-direction, Security, Stimulation, and Tradition, most likely affect the success. The findings provide a basis for developing a comprehensive e-government evaluation framework to be validated using a large scale survey in Saudi Arabia

A framework of mobile transaction use: the user’s perspective

The remarkable advances of mobile technologies and the prevalence of mobile devices have profoundly transformed telephony systems. They provide functionalities which surpass telephony needs, and which motivate the development of value-added mobile services and functions. The number of mobile phones in use far exceeds any other technical devices that could be used to market, sell, produce, or deliver products and services to consumers. These developments open lucrative opportunities to retailers and service providers. The literature highlights the fact that mobile transactions (m-transactions) are one of the most critical incentives for successful mobile commerce (m-commerce). However, the successfulness of m-transaction systems in Saudi Arabia requires a strong acceptance of the Saudi consumers. The importance of this study is accentuated by the fact that mobile commerce and its services are still in their infancy and there is still an apparent lack of acceptance of mobile transactions amongst Saudi users. Research needs to address the issue of acceptance of m-transactions from the user’s perspective, particularly within developing countries as they suffer from a noticeable lack of studies in this field. This research initially starts with a comprehensive literature review about the critical factors affecting the acceptance and use of electronic commerce (e-commerce), m-commerce and focuses on m-transactions, including different technology acceptance models and theories, helping to investigate whether there exists an effective comprehensive framework for adopting m-transactions within the context of Saudi Arabia and, more specifically, from a consumer’s perspective. Furthermore, to emphasize the true value measure of m-transaction, we must comprehend and evaluate the potency and limitations of mobile purchasing and the key factors affecting the m-transaction use decision. M-transactions hold a huge potential for online business and sales, but merely having an m-transaction service “hosted” on the World Wide Web (WWW) should not lead us to believe that customers will rush into mobile commercial websites for their desired products. Recognising that fact and realizing that there are different important factors and concerns over m-transactions playing a significant role, highlight the need for investigating and developing a framework that encompasses the critical factors affecting the intention to use m-transaction within the context of a Saudi consumer’s perspective. In order to achieve this goal, this study evolved in several stages aiming to reach a satisfactory level of maturity. These stages can be divided into three main phases: (1) exploratory phase which contains three exploratory studies which helped to add the cultural qualities as a further dimension that would play a significant role in such a unique cultural region. Consequently, a holistic framework is integrated that includes the key factors affecting the intention to use m-transactions. This framework is empirically validated in (2) a further study using a statistically representative sample size of 1008 Saudi users from different demographic backgrounds. The empirical analysis revealed that security, ease of use, usefulness, social influence, navigational structure, telecommunication infrastructure, individualism, masculinity, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and visual appeal have a significant impact on the intention to use m-transactions. Amongst those factors, ease of use was the most significant influential factor. Therefore, this led to (3) another study aiming to empirically investigate the level of ease of use (usability) of conducting m-transactions within the Saudi context. In total, this research comprised five different empirical studies to extend our understanding of the phenomenon of m-transactions. The ultimate product of this research is to develop a consolidated framework for the intention to use m-transactions, combined with a set of recommendations for mobile websites and application developers, designers, government, and other organizations that intend to extend their business in the mobile commerce area, and this should eventually benefit the users