Models of adopting cloud computing in the e-government context: a review

Governments and public sector agencies are continuously looking for ways to improve their services. Therefore, there is a need for restructuring processes and effectively using technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the business operations. Cloud computing is one of recent technological trends that support these efforts. It is a new type of sourcing model in which computing services are provided as a utility over the Internet. This paper analyzes the benefits and challenges of cloud computing over e-government systems. It reviews the existing literature on the proposed models of cloud computing adoption in the context of e-government. Further, this paper critically analyzes and classifies these models to different categories

User Acceptance Evaluation of E-Government Services, Impact of Unified Approach Framework on the Government. Cloud Sultanate of Oman as a Case Study; Government and Citizens Perspectives

Oman has adopted e-government services, but according to the United Nations E-Government Development Index classification, such services are not fully utilised. E-government classification of Oman shows a lack that motivated this research. The aim is to provide a framework that can help the Omani government to better implement e-government services. As a result, Oman classification is expected to be improved. Such framework may also help similar developing countries in implementing their e-government services. This work aimed to address both; government and citizens prospective, also aiming to help conducting a sold research a good implementable framework. Therefore, an interview with 21 government participations from different institutions was conducted followed by citizens that attracted 400 qualified responses. The research process has led to the suggestion of using another approach of e-government services, the unified e-services portals. The outcomes of this research show; both government and citizens are in favour of using unified definitions in portals. In addition, a proposed framework is presented based on supported findings that is believed to better utilising e government services hence leading to improve ranking. It is also believed that the UN assessing committees would benefit from the unified approach. Simply, it unifies the definition of each service based on the published academic definitions and work. The evaluation of the proposed framework is outside this research and can be addressed by a further research as recommended. Implementing the unified approach portals is another front that attracts implementation and evaluation

Relationship and Cloud Factors Affecting Government Confidence in the Public Cloud

Despite the advantages of the public cloud governments are still reluctant to deploy sensitive data and critical systems into the public cloud. The advantages of scalability and cost are attractive for governments and the current trend is for governments to consider placing more of their data and systems in the public cloud towards a more comprehensive government cloud solution. However, there are major concerns related to the public cloud that are especially significant to governments which are cause of reluctance in terms of public cloud adoption. Such concerns include security and privacy, governance, compliance, and performance. If these concerns are answered, governments will perceive less risk and be more confident to deploy to the public cloud. Besides the obvious technical solutions, which include improving security, another solution is an effective cloud service provider (CSP) - government relationship. Towards the development of such a solution the study contributes a novel approach to researching the CSP-government relationship in order to reveal, in depth and comprehensively, the relevant relationship and associated cloud issues, often neglected in previous research. Specifically, the developed research design was achieved through a mixed methods approach using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with senior IT professionals in various government ministries and departments in Saudi Arabia. The findings not only offer a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the relationship, but also reveal specific relationship and cloud issues as problems towards the development of a solution to increase government confidence in the public cloud. Specifically, it was found that government were more concerned about areas of the cloud that are more relevant to government and there was often an associate lack of trust or perception of risk for these areas. Moreover, it was found that in relation to more specific areas of the cloud there was increasing concern in terms of trust and risk, the ability to negotiate and collaborate, and the perception of reputation. Based on these findings, which also revealed the various interplays between relationship factors as a novel contribution, the study offers recommendations to CSPs on how they may improve their relationship with the government. This is to be achieved through resolving relationship issues and associated cloud concerns within the relationship context towards improving government confidence in the public cloud. The findings also have implications for other parties which include governments considering the public cloud and those engaged in academic research in the area of government reluctance to use the public cloud

A study of e-commerce adoption using TOE framework in Saudi retailers: firm motivations, implementation and benefits

There are many companies in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, that are yet to adopt e-commerce and those that have, are mostly at the very basic levels of implementation. The objective of this study is to explore the factors that influence the process of adoption and effective utilisation of e-commerce at different stages of implementation, with a particular emphasis on large companies in the retail industry in Saudi Arabia. Four multiple qualitative case studies involving mainly in-depth interviews were used for the data collection and analysis. The four companies in this study were chosen based on different levels of e-commerce usage. The study identifies a number of factors as important motivations for the adoption and implementation of e-commerce. Firstly, it identifies improved operational efficiency and the enhancement of marketing as motivators for e-commerce adoption and implementation. Ultimately, the objective was to expand market reach, reduce the cost of physical infrastructure while increasing sales. Secondly, Saudi retailers were interested in providing an easier and culturally compatible shopping environment for women. Considering the socio-cultural restrictions placed upon women in their public movement, e-commerce, particularly at the retained was considered a way of breaking this restriction thus allowing more women to undertake shopping more frequently. Thirdly, e-commerce generally seems to be a business response to the growing tech-savvy young population in Saudi Arabia. The study however shows that although retailers are willing to adopt e-commerce, and that most organisations have a good management approach to handling the internal constraints and challenges of the process of change associated with e-commerce implementation. However, the progress of implementation in the country is slow and only at a very early stage. This is mostly based on contextual impediments. A number of inhibiting environmental factors, including the lack of government initiatives, legal frameworks, inadequate external ICT infrastructure, low e-readiness among local trading partners, poor physical infrastructure, and lack of e-payment methods were identified. Furthermore, the socio-cultural belief systems were found to constitute a major influence on the slow progress towards the implementation of the technology. Moreover, the study found that family affiliations and the tribal system in the country has a significant influence on organisational structure and culture. This research contributes to our understanding of the nature of the Saudi business environment, and constitutes an important theoretical contribution to the development and application of the TOE framework to understand e-commerce adoption in order to assist with and the reasons for the observed successes and failures. It is envisaged that this understanding maybe drawn upon to explain similar observations in like economies in the region and the developing world at large