Generating citizen trust in e-government using a trust verification agent: A research note

Generating Citizen Trust in e-Government using a Trust Verification AgentThis is an eGISE network paper. It is motivated by a concern about the extent to which trust issues inhibit a citizen’s take-up of online public sector services or engagement with public decision and policy making. A citizen’s decision to use online systems is influenced by their willingness to trust the environment and agency involved. This project addresses one aspect of individual “trust” decisions by providing support for citizens trying to evaluate the implications of the security infrastructure provided by the agency. Based on studies of the way both groups (citizens and agencies) express their concerns and concepts in the security area, the project will develop a software tool – a trust verification agent (TVA) - that can take an agency’s security statements (or security audit) and infer how effectively this meets the security concerns of a particular citizen. This will enable citizens to state their concerns and obtain an evaluation of the agency’s provision in appropriate “citizen friendly” language. Further, by employing rule-based expert systems techniques the TVA will also be able to explain its evaluation.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-UK (grant GR/T27020/01

"Hey You? Get Off My Cloud": Evaluation of Cloud Service Models for Business Value within Pharma X

Recent reports note that managers need to operate at the intersection of business and current innovative technology. Most notably, "Strategy is not just informed by technology but powered by it". The opportunity to evaluate aspects of "cloud service models", as critical new systems, is therefore invaluable. Our research offers a pragmatic view of the characteristics of these technologies and a useful approach for identifying which may be most suitable in relation to the generation of business value. An example is provided of cloud service requirements within a multi-national pharmaceutical company (Pharma X) which is considered as a complex organizational context of significant interest. A highly qualitative methodological approach was adopted from personal interviews with a number of senior managers involved in new technology adoption. The extent of "benefits", "risks", "when to use" and "when not to use" were determined for a variety of common cloud service models to provide a schematic of important issues for evaluation and development. The research is insightful for large private sector multinational organisations which extends an analysis beyond the usual public sector studies. We conclude with lessons learned which demonstrate the most appropriate cloud enabled business models that support senior managers engaged in cloud service processes

Measures for improving information security management in organisations: the impact of training and awareness programmes

Security breaches have attracted corporate attention and major organisations are now determined to stop security breaches as they are detrimental to their success. Users’ security awareness and cautious behaviour play an important role in information security both within and outside the organisation. Arguably the most common factor contributing to these breaches is that of human behaviour towards security, which suggests that changes in human behaviour can have an impact on improving security. One of the measures suggested to modify employee behaviour is through training and awareness-raising. However, before effective training and awareness programmes can be developed to achieve this aim, it is essential to understand what factors influence user behaviour and attitudes to information security. For this study, interviews with employees within the public and private sector were conducted to explore factors that influence security behaviour when using information. Our findings offer some preliminary recognition of implications for the designs of more effective training and awareness programmes that assure and sustain, in the long term, the appropriate behaviour towards security

Understanding the Corpus of E-Government Research: An analysis of the literature using co-citation analysis and social network analysis

YesThe growing body of published e-government literature highlights the importance of e-government in society and the need to make sense of e-government by academia. In order to understand the future of e-government, it is important to understand the research that has been conducted and highlight the issues and themes that have been identified as important by empirical study. This paper analyses the corpus of e-government research published from 2000 to 2013 using Bibliometric and Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods to develop an intellectual structure of e-government research. Factor analysis, multidimensional scaling and centrality measurement are also applied to the e-government dataset using UCINET to identify the core influential articles in the field. This study identifies three core clusters of e-government research that centre around (i) e-government development models (ii) adoption and acceptance of e-government, and (iii) e-government using social media and highlights areas for future research in the field. Discover the world's researc

Digital Government Implementation in Chaotic Environment - Case Study of Libya

YesNot many studies are available to address whether it is possible to offer and implement e-Government services in places suffer from chaotic situation. This paper is intended to study the opportunity of implementing such services in a chaotic environment. An exploratory study was conducted in March/April 2015 using government officials of the state of Libya that survived a transition period upon the revolt of 2011. The study found that the Libyan government has recently and successfully implemented online services namely: National Identity Number - NID and e-Passport. The finding indicated that there are opportunities to establish e-services in countries regardless of their environmental status and clearly showed similar Critical Success Factors are need to be considered whether in chaotic or stable environment. However, their rank of importance will be differ. Lessons learned from the implementation of both services showed that Government determination has played crucial role in achieving this factual success

The Prospects of E-government Implementation in Chaotic Environment – Government and Citizens’ Perspectives - Case Study of Libya

yesUsing compulsory e-government services is increasingly difficult and challenging given the impact of corruption, political instability, armed conflict, and a chaotic environment. Post the 2011 uprising, Libya experienced serious and deep-rooted conflicts. The chaos destabilized and dismantled government institutions throughout the country. Utilizing the lens of institutional theory, this paper presents the pressures experienced by the formal institutions in the absence of law and safety, to implement the necessary e-government services and provide it to citizens all over the country. In addition, to explore the role of informal institutions in providing and using the compulsory services offered by the government and to what extent alternative services could be made available. Two qualitative pilot studies, conducted in 2015 and 2016, explored the feasibility of implementing e-government from both the government officials and the citizens’ perspectives, respectively. From the e-services provided during this time period, only the E-passport and National Identity number were found to be the only successful. Critical Success Factors - CSF of e-government implementation were defined from conducting an in-depth literature review; these were compared with our findings. Both the government officials and the citizens found corruption, infrastructure and geographical nature to be influencing factors. The social collaboration between citizens was found to be the driving factor in the success of the e-passport, despite the difficult geographical nature and the limited infrastructure all over the country

Evaluating Digital Public Services: a contingency value approach within three ‘exemplar’ sub-Sahara developing countries

YesThis paper considers recent field evidence to analyse what online public services citizens need, explores potential citizen subsidy of these specific services and investigates where resources should be invested in terms of media accessibility. We explore these from a citizen-centric affordability perspective within three ‘exemplar’ developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank and United Nations in particular promote initiatives under the ‘Information and Communication Technologies for Development’ (ICT4D) to stress the relevance of e-Government as a way to ensure development and reduce poverty. We adopt a ‘Contingency Value’ method to conceptually outline reported citizens willingness to pay for digital public services. Hence, our focus is mainly upon an empirical investigation through extensive fieldwork in the context of sub-Sahara Africa. A substantive survey was conducted in the respective cities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Lagos (Nigeria) and Johannesburg (South Africa). The sample of citizens was drawn from each respective Chamber of Commerce database for Ethiopia and South Africa, and for Nigeria a purchased database of businesses, based on stratified random sampling. These were randomly identified from both sectors ensuring all locations were covered with a total sample size of 1,297 respondents. It was found, in particular, that citizens were willing to pay to be able to access digital public services and that amounts of fees they were willing to pay varied depending on what services they wish to access and what devices they use (PCs or mobile phones).European Investment Bank under the EIB-Universities Research Action Programm

Emergent digital era governance: Enacting the role of the ‘institutional entrepreneur’ in transformational change

Yes‘Digital Era Governance’ (DEG) enables electronic networked processes for integrated, holistic public sector delivery through the adoption of contemporary digital technologies. Our study, based within the States of California and Nevada (USA), investigates the logics embedded in DEG and the critical issues involved for transformational change. We draw upon the concept of ‘enactment’ as a lens to provide insights into relevant theoretical issues. These are operationalised through an enhanced Technology Enactment Framework (TEF) to consider reforms to explore the new DEG environment and, specifically, the role of the CIO and e-government policies. Our findings reveal how public sector CIOs adopt the role of an ‘institutional entrepreneur’, who demonstrate a series of initiatives augmented through identified behaviours relating to proactive community mobilisation (leadership, member focus) and legitimisation (discourse, success stories). Furthermore, the characterisation of entrepreneurial enactment appears to be extremely beneficial to the transformation to DEG within any contemporary public sector context

Identifying social roles in a local government's digital community

YesSocial media have become an important interaction channel between the government and citizens in the era of the digital community. The adoption of social media in local government services offers a new channel to encourage citizen engagement in the public policy decision-making process. Moreover, communication with citizens through social media exposes large opportunities for the local government to analyse and appreciate the relationships among social media participants in the digital community to enhance public services. The purpose of this study is to understand the local government’s social media network and identify the social role in the local government’s social media network structure. Thus, this study adopted the social network analysis (SNA) approach on the Twitter data of a local government’s official account in the UK as a case study. The study revealed that the internal local government stakeholders play an important social role in the local government’s social media network. The implication of the study was discussed