The Wallet of Digital Citizens: Online Payment Adoption in the Developing Countries’ Public Administration – Case of Egypt

Online payment methods play a crucial role in helping digital citizens interact and receive e-government services. Citizens’ tendency to accept online payments in the public sector is a vital factor in implementing successful e-government services. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the behavioral, institutional, and social aspects that influence citizens’ tendency to accept the usage of digital payments in the Egyptian public sector. To achieve this objective, the study relies on conducting in-depth interviews with citizens who belong to different age, and social and educational backgrounds, in addition to policy experts and public employees. Meanwhile, the study adopts the lens of the UTUAT model to analyze the different dimensions that affect citizens\u27 perceptions and attitudes toward the issue. The findings of the study confirm the assumptions of the UTUAT model and highlight the importance of trust and inclusion as key factors in influencing citizens’ behavioral intentions

Determinants of e-government services adoption in developing countries (Egypt)

Electronic government (e-government) was established as an effective mechanism for increasing government productivity and efficiency and a key enabler for citizen-centric services. E-government services are yet to be universally accepted as a medium for accessing online public services since its inception more than a decade ago. Both governments and academic researchers recognise the problem of low-level adoption of e-government services among citizens; a common problem in both developed and developing countries. E-government adoption, unlike most of IT adoption by employees in private-sector organisations, is voluntary and occurs often in turbulent social-political environments. Therefore, the problem needs to be addressed comprehensively from technological, social, political, and cultural perspectives. E-government adoption research currently lacks a comprehensive conceptual framework for explaining citizen adoption of e-government services. To fill this gap, this study investigates determinants and factors necessary to enhance citizen adoption of e-government services, by extending the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) using a set of social, political, and design constructs that are derived from different research literatures. The research adopted a multi-method approach (combining quantitative and qualitative methods) to explore practices and experiences of implementing and adopting e-government systems in Egypt. The results of this research, in terms of a new customised e-government adoption model and recommendations made for e-government will directly benefit the Egyptian government and developing Arab world countries that share similar circumstances in creating a more efficient e-government adoption strategy.

Taiwan’s E-Government Usability from Foreign Perspective and Website Accessibility amid COVID-19 Pandemic

The aim of this research intends to investigate Taiwanese egovernment websites with regards to Accessibility and Usability. The automated WAVE Accessibility tool and Nielsen’s 10 Heurestic Principle based surveys of foreign users of the English egovernment websites were used to test Accessibility and Usability respectively. The study found poor results that were unanimous across the board for Usability and total of just over 100 errors for Accessibility was the best performing website. The study proves that further research and investigation is necessary if Taiwan wants to meet its own governmental ambitions with regards to egovernment

Assessing electronic government readiness of public organisations: effect of internal factors (case of Egypt).

Governments have become more and more interested in embracing Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and have made a remarkable progress over the last few years. Electronic Government (e-government) - described as the strategic use of ICT to transform the public sector - is presently recognised as a driver and a key enabler of citizen-centric, cooperative, and seamless modern governance. E-government implementation implies not only a profound transformation in the way government interacts with the governed, but also a reinvention of its internal processes and how public organisations carry their business both internally as well as externally while interacting with the other segments of the community. Based on the literature, it is frequently claimed that the availability of an effective E-Government Readiness (EGR) assessment framework is a necessary condition for advancing e-government proper implementation. Most e-government appraisal models address the Electronic Service (e-service) dimension of e-government that focuses on the services provided by the government to the citizens on the Internet. This gives a very narrow perspective to e-government ignoring a key dimension: the Electronic Administration (e-administration), that highlights the importance of modernising the public sector, increasing government productivity, and transforming its internal processes. Furthermore, developed models assess E-Government Readiness (EGR) on a country as a whole without conducting an in-depth assessment on a public organisation scale. In addition, the majority of these models do not take into consideration the opinion of the civil servants involved in such e-government programs, a key stakeholder that affects their success. The objective of this thesis is to develop a framework that assesses EGR focusing on e-administration within public organisations through obtaining its employees‟ feedback. The suggested framework investigated the internal factors affecting EGR categorised into four dimensions: (i) strategy, (ii) people, (iii) technology, and (iv) processes. A number of measuring constructs are identified under each dimension. The framework components, relationships, and hypotheses were derived from the literature on Electronic Readiness (e-readiness), EGR, Information Systems (IS) and Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) success. In order to test the proposed framework, the thesis examined the relations and interactions of these components in an emerging e-government environment using four case studies of different characteristics to represent public organisations in Egypt. These organisations cover municipalities, investment, tax payment, and health sectors. Quantitative data collection method was through distributing a questionnaire to a sample of employees in each organisation. Data obtained from the questionnaire in each organisation was triangulated with data gathered from other sources of evidence: (i) interviews with top management, (ii) documentations, (iii) archival records, and (iv) observations. Findings of the empirical research were evaluated against the framework suggested in the beginning leading to a final framework that assesses EGR of public organisations. Findings revealed that framework's hypotheses were all confirmed. Concerning Egypt's EGR assessment, results proved that processes, technology, and people have a high effect on EGR, whereas strategy has a modest impact on it. This reflects that strategy is not given a high value in terms of e-government and that top management need to further promote e-government within public Egyptian organisations. Findings revealed also the modest impact of strategy on the two dimensions: technology and processes compared with its high effect on people. The research highlighted also the different measuring constructs that have the highest weights in each of the four dimensions. This helps in understanding e-government environment of public organisations in Egypt, showing the main components that affect EGR. The thesis though provides a rich insight into investigating e-administration within public organisations especially in a developing country such as Egypt, and presents a systematic approach to assess EGR of public organisations based on the four e-government building blocks: (i) strategy, (ii) people, (iii) technology, and (iv) processes. Therefore the thesis contributes to research areas in the literature related to assessments of information systems, e-commerce, e-readiness, and e-government readiness

E-Governance: Strategy for Mitigating Non-Inclusion of Citizens in Policy Making in Nigeria

The Nigerian federation that currently has 36 states structure adopted the Weberian Public Administrative system before now as an ideal way of running government, which was characterized with the traditional way of doing things without recourse to the deployment of Information Communication Technology (ICT). Today e-governance is seen as a paradigm shift from the previous way of governance. Research has shown that, the adoption and implementation of e-governance is more likely to bring about effective service delivery, mitigate corruption and ultimately enhance citizens’ participation in governmental affairs. However, it has been argued that infrastructure such as regular electricity power and access to the Internet, in addition to a society with high rate of literacy level are required to effectively implement and realize the potentials of e-governance for improved delivery of services. Due to the difficulties currently experienced, developing nations need to adequately prepare for the implementation of e-governance on the platform of Information Communication Technology (ICT). Hence, this study seeks to examine whether the adoption and implementation of e-governance in the context of Nigeria would mitigate the hitherto non-inclusion of citizens in the formulation and implementation of government policies aimed at enhanced development. To achieve the objective of the study, data were sourced and analyzed majorly by examining government websites of 20 states in the Nigerian federation to ascertain if there are venues for citizens to interact with government in the area of policy making and feedback on government actions, as a way of promoting participatory governance. The study revealed that the adoption and implementation of e-governance in the country is yet to fully take place. This is due to lack of infrastructure, low level of literacy rate and government inability to provide the necessary infrastructure for e-governance to materialize. The paper therefore, recommends among others the need for the Federal Government to involve a sound and clear policy on how to go about the adoption and implementation of egovernance through deliberate effort at increasing budgetary allocation towards infrastructural development and mass education of citizens

The Impact of e-Democracy in Political Stability of Nigeria

The history of the Nigerian electoral process has been hitherto characterized by violence stemming from disputes in election outcomes. For instance, violence erupted across some states in Northern Nigeria when results indicated that a candidate who was popular in that part of the country was losing the election leading to avoidable loss of lives. Beside, this dispute in election outcome lingers for a long time in litigation at the electoral tribunals which distracts effective governance. However, the increasing penetrating use of ICTs in Nigeria is evident in the electoral processes with consequent shift in the behavior of actors in the democratic processes, thus changing the ways Nigerians react to election outcomes. This paper examines the trend in the use ICT in the Nigerian political system and its impact on the stability of the polity. It assesses the role of ICT in recent electoral processes and compares its impact on the outcome of the process in lieu of previous experiences in the Nigeria. Furthermore, the paper also examines the challenges and risks of implementing e-Democracy in Nigeria and its relationship to the economy in the light of the socio-economic situation of the country. The paper adopted qualitative approach in data gathering and analysis. From the findings, the paper observed that e-democracy is largely dependent on the level of ICT adoption, which is still at its lowest ebb in the country. It recognizes the challenges in the provision of ICT infrastructure and argues that appropriate low-cost infrastructure applicable to the Nigerian condition can be made available to implement e-democracy and thus arouse the interest of the populace in governance, increase the number of voters, and enhance transparency, probity and accountability, and participation in governance as well as help stabilize the nascent democrac

The impact of social network applications on societies of the MENA region (Egypt as a case study)

Despite the importance of promoting socially responsible citizenship in Internet age with the global massive spread of IT consumption, there is a paucity of research for scrutinizing the impact of ICT tools such as Social Networking Sites on citizens of the Middle East and North Africa region and/or investigating their tendency toward digital transformation. In the information age, Internet and its applications are creating a ‘network state’ due to the continuous interaction of SNS by people on their daily personal and professional lives; which made it a rich data bank for researchers to analyze and predict people’s behavioral, cultural and societal change. This research focused on the digital impact of SNS on various aspects of life in the society of Egypt and the forecast of its subsequent normal progression over time. The research questions were; what are the factors affecting the usage of SNS and its impact on the society of Egypt? In addition to, How SNS usage and IT developments are likely to affect future changes in Egypt’s culture and societal behaviors in the arena of human computer interaction and information communication technology? Hence, the research investigated those questions on recent years where there is still not enough complete specialized analysis nor mature socio-technological researches have been developed about the online society of Egypt. In specific, it concerned with studying the interaction of human practices with information network applications and the latter role in changing human cultures and societal behaviors from personal, governmental and business perspectives. This study is an example of interdisciplinary research, linking cultural theories and social networking phenomena with human-mediated informational technology and communication studies contributing to the emerging field of Internet studies. Therefore, this research’s best matching philosophy is interpretivism, the research approach is inductive and the utilized research strategy was grounded theory and surveys through four employed quantitative and qualitative research methods over two phases. Phase one implemented observational study, survey questionnaire and focus group sessions; while interviews were accomplished in phase two. Outcomes are reached through applying descriptive statistics of structural equation modeling via using SPSS 20.0, AMOS 20.0.0, Tableau 10.4, and MS 2010 Excel; in addition to, qualitative content analysis using NVivo 11. Findings of interweaved data collection methods supported in investigating the research questions and testing the hypotheses of the research proposed SDR model. Consequently, these research findings deduced that the Egyptian online society is affected by SNS forming a pre-digitalization stage. In addition to the research’s major offering of the SDR model, there were four others emerged contributions to knowledge base. One of the main challenges of research in this domain is the dynamic pace of both technological developments and users’ preferences. Hence, this research study impacts the growing knowledge repository with five contributions about the significant role of SNS in transforming people’s daily activities which can shed lights of more novel questions for other neighboring countries as well as regarding other ICT tools for future studies

Evaluating the impact of institutional logic on the corporate Internet reporting by Egyptian listed companies

This study explores the institutional logic(s) governing the Corporate Internet Reporting (CIR) by Egyptian listed companies. In doing so, a mixed methods approach was followed. The qualitative part seeks to understand the perceptions, believes, values, norms, that are commonly shared by Egyptian companies which engaged in these practices. Consequently, seven cases of large listed Egyptian companies operating in different industries have been examined. Other stakeholders and stockholders have been interviewed in conjunction with these cases. The quantitative part consists of two studies. The first one is descriptive aiming to specify whether the induced logic(s) from the seven cases are commonly embraced by other Egyptian companies. The second study is explanatory aiming to investigate the impact of several institutional and economic factors on the extent of CIR, types of the online information, quality of the websites as well as the Internet facilities. Drawing on prior CIR literature, four potential types of logics could be inferred: efficiency, legitimacy, technical and marketing based logics. In Egypt, legitimacy logic was initially embraced in the earlier years after the Internet inception. latter, companies confronted radical challenges in their internal and external environments which impelled them to raise their websites potentialities to defend their competitive position; either domestically or internationally. Thus, two new logics emphasizing marketing and technical perspectives have emerged, in response. Strikingly, efficiency based logic is not the most prevalent logic driving CIR practices in Egypt as in the developed countries. The empirical results support this observation and show that almost half of Egyptian listed companies 115 as on December 2010 possessed an active website, half of them 62 disclosed part of their financial and accounting information, during December 2010 to February 2011. Less than half of the websites 52 offered latest annual financial statements. Fewer 33(29%) websites provided shareholders and stock information or included a separate section for corporate governance 25 (22%) compared to 50 (44%) possessing a section for news or press releases. Additionally, the variations in CIR practices, as well as timeliness and credibility were also evident even at industrial level. After controlling for firm size, profitability, leverage, liquidity, competition and growth, it was realized that industrial companies and those facing little competition tend to disclose less. In contrast, management size, foreign investors, foreign listing, dispersion of shareholders and firm size provided significant and positive impact individually or collectively. In contrast, neither audit firm, nor most of performance indicators (i.e. profitability, leverage, and liquidity) did exert an influence on the CIR practices. Thus, it is suggested that CIR practices are loosely institutionalised in Egypt, which necessitates issuing several regulative and processional rules to raise the quality attributes of Egyptian websites, especially, timeliness and credibility. Beside, this study highlights the potency of assessing the impact of institutional logic on CIR practices and suggests paying equal attention to the institutional and economic factors when comparing the CIR practices over time or across different institutional environments in the future

African E-Government Research Landscape

Over the past decade, African governments have followed the worldwide trends towards establishing e-government with the aim of improving public service delivery to citizens through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). As a consequence, authors from academia, government departments and agencies, civil society, industry, non-governmental and international organizations have embarked into e-government research focusing on Africa. However, the state of the art of e-government research in Africa is poorly documented. This study analyzes the status of e-government research in Africa. A qualitative technique based on online searches and literature reviews is used to collect data that have addressed any aspect of e-government development in Africa. Thereafter, the content analysis of the reviewed literature is performed. The results of the study show: (1) the growth pattern of Africa e-government research within a period of 10 years from 2002 to 2012, (2) the issues addressed by the researchers on e-government development in Africa, (3) the African countries and regional participation in e-government research in Africa, and (4) the affiliation and expertise of authors undertaking research on e-government in Africa. These results provide useful insights that might be of interest to African governments, industry and academia for the future development of e-government on the continent. Also included in the paper is an annotated bibliography of e-government research

Factors affecting adoption of eHealth in Egypt

This research investigates the factors that affect technology acceptance in the eHealth domain with regard to Egypt. It also focuses on the impact of the perceptions and attitudes of online privacy, due to the sensitivity of healthcare information, and trust, in addition to the other technology acceptance factors affecting acceptance of eHealth in Egypt. The aims of the research were to (i) understand the impact of general attitudes to online privacy and associated concerns on the acceptance and uptake of eHealth services, and (ii) to develop an enhanced technology acceptance model that takes into consideration factors pertaining to technology acceptance adopted from the UTAUT Model as well as online privacy, online trust and Internet experience factors. Results from a questionnaire survey of a randomly selected sample of computer literate members of the general public revealed interesting correlations between users’ acceptance of eHealth services and attitudes to online privacy, indicating that users’ general attitudes to online privacy negatively affect eHealth acceptance. Factors pertaining to the UTAUT model such (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions) have a positive impact on potential acceptance. Furthermore, factors of online trust and Internet experience and exposure also show a positive impact on eHealth technology acceptance. Questions used to measure eHealth technology acceptance were adapted to the eHealth domain as well as to the Egyptian culture in order to reflect potential users’ understanding of eHealth concepts. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model (Venkatesh et al., 2003) was used as a foundation for testing factors of technology acceptance. Linked issues such as e-privacy threats such unauthorized use of personal information, privacy policies and regulations, and possible links with existing technology acceptance models in the eHealth context were also investigated. The research concluded that these additional factors of privacy and trust are relevant to technology acceptance in the eHealth context, and should be included in technology acceptance models. The results of this research, in terms of recommendations made for eHealth, will directly benefit the Egyptian government; commercial services and eHealth researchers among others