Examining User Access Options for eGovernment Services During a Crisis from a Digital Inequality Perspective

City governments incorporate ICTs into government services to improve citizen participation and access to those services. Too much dependence on technology, however, can lead to concerns about creating a digital divide between different groups of citizens. The potential for digital inequality is a critical issue that can be exacerbated by insufficient attention being paid to vulnerabilities across communities. Given that socio-economically vulnerable populations are the ones who need government services the most, especially during disaster events, it is critical to investigate the extent to which digital inequality is an issue for technology-based government services. With this in mind, this paper analyzes the use of different technology-enabled access options for a representative eGovernment service system, the New York City 311 service system, in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two sets of socio-economically distinct locations in New York City are compared, using average income as a proxy for vulnerability, to draw conclusions about potential inequalities in such a system during a crisis

Factors Affecting Citizens’ Trust and Confidence in Government and Its Relation with Transformation of Government

During the last two decades citizens trust and confidence in their governments has continued to decline and e-government is seen as a means to reverse this trend. However, it appears that e-government alone is not enough. The literature has drawn conflicting conclusions, the consensus suggests that ICT enabled government transformation often improves citizens’ trust in government. This research investigates the influence of a transformed government on citizens’ trust and confidence. Based on a systematic literature review, a conceptual model was developed and then a pilot study conducted using an online survey targeting ordinary citizens of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The findings of the pilot study confirm that citizens’ trust and confidence in their government is positively influenced by transformation of government mediated by government performance and citizens’ satisfaction

Perceived User Adoption Barriers in e-Government viewed from the practitioner’s lens

Going digital is a common fad shared amongst organisations today, in gaining the efficiencies by replacing tradition brick and mortar services with digital online services. There are a vast amount of different users we must consider when making such decision such as removing brick and mortar services. There are defined forces and adoption barriers faced by users not either willing to change or the inability to transition easily on to digital services. Making a decision to go digital organisations must be better informed about these forces and adoption barriers. The research will aim to provide insights on the key barriers to adoption that are impacting on effective implementation of digital services to support results 9 and 10. The research assesses the perceived barriers to adoption in e-Government from a practitioner’s point of view. Thus, the main question this project seeks to address is “What are the level of awareness and importance placed on barriers to adoption in e-Government services from a practitioner’s point of view?” The research will aim to provide the rich insights from data collected from practitioners to determine the size of the problem within New Zealand

Civic engagement with traditional government and mobile government: comparing rural to urban citizens in Saudi Arabia

Mobile devices have added new channels for the communication between governments and citizens. The new nature of engagement between government and citizens through mobile devices needs to be studied intensively in order to make it more effective. Thus, this research examines the relationship between mobile government (M-government) and civic engagement deeply. In particular, it compares civic engagement with traditional government (T-government) to civic engagement with M-government in order to determine if M-government increases civic engagement. Furthermore, it compares civic engagement of urban citizens to civic engagement of rural citizens in the case of T-government and in the case of M-government. This dissertation used structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews as the major methodologies. Our results revealed highly significant evidence for the increase in civic engagement with M-government compared to T-government. Moreover, the results indicated that M-government allows similar levels of civic engagement between urban and rural citizens. However, the results did not detect significant difference between civic engagement of urban and rural citizens with T-government. However, the major finding of this dissertation is that Saudi citizens believe that Human-to-Computer interaction is more effective than Human-to-Human interaction for their communication with government

User satisfaction model to measure open government data usage

The open government data (OGD) initiative is presented by the government of any country to achieve promotion of transparency, social control and citizens participation in policy making. The use of OGD in Malaysia is still in its early stage and facing problems such as less participation, security issues, and lack of awareness. While most of the research in Information Communication Technology (ICT) that underpinned by Expectation Confirmation Theory (ECT) are focused on user satisfaction and determination of users’ reuse intention, this study focus on the direct antecedents of OGD users’ intention to use and its influence on OGD users’ satisfaction, as this research is still scarce. This research aims to examine ECT model on users’ satisfaction mediated by the intention to use the open government data (OGD). The objectives of this research are in three folds; (1) to design an integrated ECT and TAM models for explaining OGD satisfaction, (2) to examine the mediating role of citizens’ behavioural intention between the expectations, confirmation, perceived performance, incentive on usage, perceived risk and citizen’s satisfaction of open government data, (3) and to validate the impact of incentives on usage and perceived risk in explaining the new ECT model in the OGD context. Data were collected from 250 samples of OGD users in Malaysia. Empirical evidences were gathered through self-administered questionnaires using the Likert scale. The data were analysed using Partially Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) in order to test the model. The final model was verified by experts in the area. Results revealed that expectation has significant relationship with confirmation, but perceived performance showed insignificant relationship with confirmation which serves as a unique finding. Additionally, confirmation, expectation, perceived performance, incentive on usage and perceived risk has significant relationship with intention to use OGD. Meanwhile, the analysis proved that the intention to use mediates the relationship between confirmation, expectation, perceived performance, incentive on usage, perceived risk and satisfaction on use of OGD. This study suggests that the user’s expectations on OGD must be met in creating stronger intention and satisfaction. The implications of the study are to improve data service quality, support innovative services development, increase data transparency, and boost up potential investment

Digital transformation of government lead to enhanced citizens’ trust and confidence in government

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonOver the years, citizens’ trust and confidence in their governments has continued to decline and digital government is expected to reverse this trend. An enormous amount of money has been spent, worldwide, on electronic government initiatives that are focused on improving performance, reducing costs and enhancing citizens’ trust and confidence in their governments. Yet, of the many initiatives that have been implemented, very few have achieved real transformation of government (i.e. fundamental changes to the way core functions of government are performed to achieve noticeable gains in performance and efficiency). As such, there is a need to understand how transformation of government as a construct affects citizens’ trust and confidence in government in the presence of factors such as, government performance and citizen satisfaction. This research empirically investigates the influence of digital transformation of government on citizens’ trust and confidence in the context of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Bahrain is a top ranking country in terms of use of ICT in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. A conceptual model was developed and validated using an online survey targeting randomly citizens of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Based on 313 responses, the findings of this research suggest that citizens’ trust and confidence in their government is positively influenced by transformation of government, mediated by government performance and citizens’ satisfaction. The study found that e-government and technology are not enough for achieving a real transformation of government, and therefore, in tackling the decline in citizens’ trust and confidence in government. Other factors were found to be important in this equation, including transparency and accountability of government functions and activities in meeting citizens’ expectations. The research offers multiple policy implications and theoretical contributions, in addition to helping understand how digital transformation of government can enhance citizens’ trust and confidence in government, improve government-to-citizen relationship, and increase the adoption of digital services offered by governments. From a policy perspective, this research offers a validated conceptual model that can be used as a frame of reference when planning ICT-enabled transformation projects in government. From a theoretical context, this study is the first to investigate the relationship between transformation of government and citizens’ trust and confidence in government

Exploring the quality of e-government service from citizens' perspectives

Electronic government - e-government - has become a major area of research for the field of information systems (IS) and a leading area of development for governments worldwide. This study defines e-government as the use of ICT for using and delivering government services, which considers the use of the service (rather than just the technology) and accounts for government and citizen aspects. Although there is a rich body of evidence that demonstrates the benefits of e-government for citizens, businesses, and governments (Alshomrani and Qamar 2013; Alenezi, Tarhini, and Sharma 2015; Ashaye and Irani 2014), citizens and governments continue to face challenges around the increased greater use of e-government (Alshehri and Drew 2010; Chen and Hsieh 2016; Nurdin, Stockdale, and Scheepers 2015). Most notably, these challenges differ between developing and developed countries (Choi et al. 2016; Sharma 2012; Srivastava and Panigrahi 2016). This research explores the quality of e-government services from the perspective of Jordanian citizens (Jordan is a developing country in the Middle East). More specifically, it aims to: examine and describe the experience of e-government service quality; analyse how expectations of e-government service quality is formed; and explain the impact of e-government services quality on citizen’ trust and continuous use of e-government services. The research is motivated by three goals. First, research must be more specific when it comes to the quality of e-government service, suggesting that its conceptualisation and measurement should be based on users’ perceptions and be context specific. Thus, this study investigates e-government service quality from Jordanian citizens’ perspectives. Jordan is one of the leading countries in the region regarding the availability of national information technology (IT) infrastructure for online services. Also, the population's motivation and ability to conduct online transactions are amongst the highest regionally (Alawneh and Hattab 2008). However, there are still issues around trust and the quality of e-government services (Abu-Shanab and Al-Azzam 2012). Second, there is a need to understand citizen expectation about e-service quality using qualitative research in order to provide more in-depth insights and go deeper and understand reasons and mechanisms leading to satisfaction and for enabling trust (or not) in e-government services. Third, one notable area that is missing in the existing e-government body of knowledge is how citizens form their expectations of e-government service quality and the association between perceptions of e-service quality and satisfaction and the decision to continually use e-government services. These motivations led to three research questions which are addressed in the context of Jordan: (a) What is the citizen’s perspective about the quality of e-government services? (b) How are citizens’ expectations of quality e-government service formed? (c) How does quality of e-government services impact on citizens’ trust of e-government services? To address these research questions, conceptually, the study draws ideas from e-government services literature, expectation and spillover effects and trust theory. Empirically, this study undertakes a qualitative study, relying on interviews with users of the e-government service in Jordan. The data collection involved 20 interviews undertaken with e-government service users in Jordan from different geographical locations. To help understand the types and functions of e-government services, supplementary secondary data was obtained from government websites used by participants. The study findings illuminate the quality of e-government services from the participant’s viewpoint. In particular, the findings point out areas where the quality of e-government service needs to improve. There are significant concerns and difficulties of use e-government which can limit the use of e-government services and give the participant a low perspective on the quality of service. Moreover, the findings provide a brief discussion on the quality of e-government service from the user’s perspective, to help in understanding the factors affecting the citizen’s perspective in measuring the quality of e-government service success, through comparing the e-government service with other online services such as social media e-shopping and e-banking service. The study also identifies issue around the quality of e-government service based on the citizen’s trust. The study provides suggestions to improve the quality of e-government service and trust based on the participant’s experience with e-government and other online services

Users’ experience of e-government services: a case study based on the Nigeria immigration service

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of users’ experience of e-government services in developing countries through a study of a specific e-government service, the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) portal. This thesis therefore encompasses both the users’ experience of e-government services and effect of the digital divide in the use of e-government services. The NIS portal was chosen as the context for this study because it is the most well-developed e-government service in Nigeria. Those seeking to travel in and out of the country have no option but to use it regardless of whether they are currently living in Nigeria. Given the importance of profiling a significant number of users to support the investigation of relationships between variables, and the geographic scatter of the respondents, snowball sampling was used for the questionnaire survey used to collect the data. The questionnaire design and subsequent analysis was informed by previous research and theory in the fields of customer satisfaction, service quality, technology adoption and the digital divide. 351 completed questionnaires were collected and analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of a Moment Structures (AMOS) Software. All respondents identified themselves as having used the NIS portal, with 50% reporting their main place of residence as Nigeria, and the remainder being resident in other countries. The analysis of descriptive statistics and the responses to the open questions and statements used in the questionnaire suggested that the respondents had a low level of satisfaction with the NIS website, with much of their concern stemming from issues pertaining to security, support and trustworthiness. There were also concerns documented regarding the safety of personal and financial data. They also mentioned significant issues with the ease of use of the website and its quality. Nonetheless, users valued the quality of the content and information available through the portal and were positive about its convenience and potential to deliver benefits. In terms of usage barriers, the most significant is Nigeria’s intermittent electricity supply, closely followed by the high cost of internet access, both of which pose a particular challenge, given the high rate of unemployment in Nigeria. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to generate an e-government user experience scale confirming the importance of dimensionsidentified by other researchers, as well as identifying new factors. These were: security and support, content and information, ease of use, benefits, barriers, convenience, trust and website quality. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used to investigate the relationships between these factors. Content and information were found to have a significant effect on ease of use and convenience. Website quality was found to have a significant effect on ease of use, security and support. The website’s ease of use was found to have a significant effect on barriers and convenience to have a significant effect on perceived benefits. Meanwhile, security and support was found to have a significant effect on trustworthiness. Barriers and benefits as well as trustworthiness were all found to have a significant effect on user satisfaction. Demographic statistics supported hypotheses testing on the digital divide in the use of e-government services. Demographic (age, education, gender and income), social-economic (employment) and geographic (location: rural and urban, developing and developed countries) factors affected the e-government users’ internet experience, their access to computing facilities and their e-government experience thus confirming that a digital divide exists amongst NIS portal users. This research makes a number of contributions. Firstly, it is one of a very few significant studies to explore user experience of an e-government portal in a major developing country. As a result, it has brought to light important concerns regarding users’ security, privacy and trustworthiness as they relate to their personal information. Secondly, it compares users both inside and outside the country, thereby offering unique insights on the digital divide. Finally, it proposes an e-government user-experience model that identifies the relationships between the various factors that contribute to user satisfaction. Suggestions are offered for practitioners, e-government policymakers and researchers