Requirements for redesigning the interface of Iraqi e-government portal

Many countries have provided their government services to the people online. However, Iraq is still looking for opportunities to implement the online technology for their government services. The initiatives to venture into online government services, or called electronic government (e-government) have not shown good return. Although the e-government is available, people still prefer to work on traditional way, or enter into the e-government modules through improper channels. Hence, they are viewed as not using the e-government portal. Many factors were identified influencing the disadvantages of the existing e-government portal; nevertheless the design of the front office is not making users attracted to enter into the portal through the proper home page. In contrast, the users tend to go directly to the module they intend to. Hence, his study deduces that the user interface of the front office of the portal was not usable, not supporting user experience. This study proposes a set of elements for the Iraqi e-government portal to ensure that it is perceived usable in terms of usefulness and ease-of-use. This study develops the prototype that incorporates the elements as Iraqi e-government portal (Ie-gP). Therefore, the aim of the study is to propose a set of elements that make the Ie-gP usable from users‟ perception. To accomplish that, three specific objectives are formulated: (1) to determine the interface elements for the front office of Ie-gP, (2) to design and develop the front office of Ie-gP, and (3) to evaluate the ease-of-use of the front office of Ie-gP. Comparative analysis, prototyping, and experimental studies are used to accomplish the objectives and aim. General findings show that Ie-gP is perceived useful and easy-to-use. The main contributions of this study are the elements of usable e-government portals for Iraqi context and the prototype of the usable portal called IegP

Analyzing Turkish e-government websites by eye tracking

Usability studies provide essential information about users' views and perceptions of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of given online services. Nowadays, e-government web sites become popular. Therefore, there is a need for usability testing to specify the usability problems and to make the services of the e-government more usable. The purpose of this study is to investigate usability of some Turkish e-government services. The study examined usability of five Turkish e-government web sites: Ministry of National Education - Student Information System (eokul), Ministry of Justice - National Judicial Network Project (UYAP), Turkish National Police: Vehicle Search System, Social Security Institute: Service Details and General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre. It was conducted with nine participants. This study is a case study with mixed design methodology, in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed and combined. Quantitative data were collected through an eye-tracker, a pre-test questionnaire of participants' demographics and previous utilization of egovernment web sites and a post-test questionnaire. Qualitative data were collected through both semi-structured individual interviews and observation during test. The study results identify the usability problems encountered while using government services. The study concludes with specific recommendations for improvement of e-government services in Turkey. © 2013 IEEE

An Empirical Analysis of the Policy Makers Preferences towards e-Government Adoption

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 협동과정 기술경영·경제·정책전공, 2013. 2. 이종수.Over the last several years, advances of Internet and networking technologies (especially e-Government) have pushed the boundaries forward and attracted the attention of governments in developed and developing nations. Government organizations, particularly in the developing world, have realized that the world is changing at an incredible pace because of these technological changes. This realization has led to a strong desire and ambitious vision to empower new technologies in their reform processes. Thus, governments should develop and formulate national strategies and policies to promote information economy and achieve socioeconomic benefits. In doing so, governments can attain a more efficient operations reform and enhance productivity and transparency. To this end, implementing an e-Government system is considered essential to attaining this goal. The process of innovation in government sectors is still a major challenge for many developing governments. Yemen is a third-world country that is trying to implement a new electronic government system in public agencieshowever, as seen in other developing countries, Yemen has faced many failures due to several reasons, most importantly, the high rate of resistance to change by employees in government sector. To this extent, the goal of this research is to investigate the preferences and opinions of various government staff (normal employees, technical staff, and decision makers) toward e-Government system implementation. Policy recommendations are driven based on this aim in terms of e-Government adoption promotion with specific empirical analysis in Yemen. To date, no study, experimental or otherwise, has been conducted in this field. As such, this research will provide valuable insights for the government and expert policy makers concerning research on e-Government in developing countries. This research used quantitative and qualitative methods and applied two recent methodologies to achieve that goal. The first method was Conjoint Analysis (CA), based on Discrete Choice Modeling (DCM) and Random Utility Theory (RUT), with rank-ordered mixed logit model. The second methodology was an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), based on Multi-Criteria Decision Making method (MCDM), to examine government officials opinions in ranking successful factors in the implementation of a robust e-Government in Yemen. To build a policy setting, this study also included heterogeneity into the mixed logit model via a random coefficient setting and the interaction of the identified e-Government attributes with demographics and respondent characteristics. The attributes involved for the conjoint analysis study are e-Government Strategy, Legal framework, Government Electronic Administration Office (GEA), Portal language, Privacy as a proxy of security, Training, and Operational Cost as an annual budget for the e-Government system. Moreover, the factors tested for the analytical hierarchy analysis are Governing factors including (administrative and legislative factors), Organizational factors including (organizational structure and technological factors), and External factors including (citizen-centric and economic factors). The result of the analysis of the conjoint study proved that the privacy of government and personal data clearly exerts the greatest impact on preference structure, followed by a strong legal framework for the implementation of e-Government. However, there was evidence for the cost sensitivity that policy makers experience in this field. Government officials should address this issue through electronic obligation policies for penetration of e-Government. Additionally, respondents preferred implementing the e-Government system with a clear and tailored long-term strategy that outlined different stages of the implementation. The findings of this study are imperative to create policies for enhancing e-Government implementation in Yemen, which should include strengthening the government to adopt the system in government agencies, generating and enabling an environment that supports user access, and expanding e-Government capabilities with reliable and fast online services for citizen. Based on the quantitative findings of the CA and AHP, this study applied a qualitative research method to supplement the empirical results by interviewing decision makers within the Yemen government. The researcher then applied priority settings for policies to drive the Gap Analysis and identify reasons for the mismatch found between the researchs perceptions and realities in Yemen. Ultimately, this study anticipates warranting the need for a supply-based analysis of e-Government adoption by government officials in developing countries, thus, increasing the rate of adoption and reducing the rate of resistance to change to this electronic system of government.Table of Contents Abstract i Table of Contents v List of Figures ix List of Tables x Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overall Introduction 1 1.2 Purpose of Dissertation 6 1.3 Structure of the Dissertation 10 Chapter 2 Research Background and problem discussion 13 2.1 ICT overview in Yemen 13 2.2 E-Government development in Yemen 15 2.2.1 UN e-Government ranking for Yemen 16 2.2.2 History Development 17 2.2.3 Current situation 19 2.3 Challenges for e-Government implementation in developing countries 20 2.3.1 Administrative Challenges 23 2.3.2 Legislative Challenges 25 2.3.3 Organizational Challenges 26 2.3.4 Technological Challenges 28 2.3.5 Citizen-Centric Challenges 30 2.3.6 Financial Challenges 34 2.4 Problem discussion on e-Government implementation in Yemen 37 Chapter 3 : Previous Studies and Literature Review 40 3.1 E-Government Concepts 40 3.1.1 Definition of E-Government 40 3.1.2 E-Government Benefits 43 3.1.4 E-Government Applications 44 3.2 E-Government Adoption Studies 48 3.2.1 The Developed Countries 48 3.2.2 The Developing Countries 53 3.3 The Research Methodologies Related Literature 57 3.3.1 Discrete Choice Modeling 57 3.3.2 Analytical Hierarchy Process 63 3.4 Implications of Existing Literature 70 Chapter 4 Preferences based on Discrete Choice Modeling 73 4.1 Methodological Framework 73 4.1.1 Random Utility Model (RUM) 73 4.1.2 Willingness To Pay (WTP) 75 4.2 Empirical Model 77 4.2.1 Rank-ordered Mixed Logit Model 78 4.3 Survey and Data 82 4.3.1 Conjoint Survey 82 4.3.2 Attributes and attributes levels 84 4.3.3 Data Collection 91 4.3.4 Descriptive Statistics 92 4.4 Empirical Results and Discussion 98 4.4.1 Model Specification and Estimation 98 4.4.2 Rank-ordered Mixed Logit Model Estimation 101 4.4.3 Model Estimation with socio-demographics interactions 113 Chapter 5 Preferences based on Analytical Hierarchy Process 116 5.1 Methodological framework 116 5.2 AHP Model 119 5.3 Survey and Data 120 5.3.1 AHP survey 121 5.3.2 Data collection 123 5.4 Analysis and Results 125 5.4.1 Prioritizing the identified factors 125 5.4.2 AHP and Group Decision Making 128 5.4.3 Overall Inconsistency ratio 129 5.4.4 Participants Preferences for each group 130 5.4.5 Similarities and dissimilarity perspectives of groups preferences 139 5.4.6 Overall Aggregated Preferences Results (Combined ALL Groups): 144 5.4.7 Results and Discussions: 148 Chapter 6 Gap Analysis and Policy Implications 156 6.1 Framework of the Gap Analysis 156 6.2 Summary of the Quantitative Findings 158 6.3 Qualitative Analysis 162 6.3.1 Structure of Qualitative Analysis 163 6.3.2 Main Qualitative Findings 166 6.4 Gap Analysis 169 6.5 Policy Implications 174 Chapter 7 : Overall Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research 183 Bibliography 187 Appendixes 201 Appendix A- Official Letter for conducting the survey 201 Appendix B- Survey Questionnaires 202 B1. Questionnaire in Arabic 202 B2. Questionnaire in English 212 Appendix C 223 C1.The generated choice cards 223 C2. AHP Inconsistency of each respondent (Total 65 respondents) 224 C3. Overall Relative Importance w. r. t. Goal: the priority of each criteria 225 C4. Details of the Qualitative Findings 226 Abstract in Korean 227 Acknowledgments 231Docto