E-Government Portals Efficiency and Performance in Saudi Arabia - Research Proposal Example

Contents Summary 2 Introduction 3 1 Background 3 2 Significance of the 4 3 Literature 4 E-government 4 Framework and Standards 5 Assessment 6 Portals 6 Saudi e-government program 7 Project Objectives 7 Research Philosophy 8 Research Design 9 Research Analysis 9 List of References 10 Summary E-government programs are required in developing countries to provide information and support to citizens in every country. E-government programs offer help to citizens, business sector, other governments, and NGOs by providing information that might ease the process or offer guidelines for dealing with legal issues or business setup. The e-government programs are helpful as citizens, and business sectors can find useful information from the government, which they trust rather than some private organisations that they find hard to trust and can sometimes misleads people. In some countries, e-government programs might come to be very useful as there are strict guidelines to what is legal and what is not. Saudi Arabia stands out to be a country that has started to implement e-government services for its citizen. As the horizon of technology is still expanding, the research takes a look at the e-government portals in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to see how it stands out with the rest of the world and the improvement that needs to be made in the global context. The ultimate aim of this research is to investigate the e-government implementation and effectiveness in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, recognise the main factors of performance efficiency of e-government portals, identify problems and gaps that have involved in e-government portals, inspect the problems impacts in e-government strategies and to provide the e-government responsible experts with recommendations on how to improve the performance of e-government portals. To achieve such purposes, this study will use variety of theoretical models and frameworks. The findings will show a comparison of three main portals in Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Interior portal, Ministry of Education Safeers portal and the Ministry of Labour portal. Introduction 1.1 Background Internet is one of the most widely used tools to seek information in both developed and underdeveloped countries (Fountain, 2001). Wherever people are they can easily access internet and extract the kind of information they are looking for. Internet becomes a very useful tool for not only the private sector involved in providing services to people but also the public sector that can guide and make the citizens aware of the services they provide (Heeks &Bailur, 2007). When the government of a country aims to provide information to its citizens over the internet or any other electronic tool it is known as e-government (Ndou, 2004). The type of facility allows a government to strengthen and build better relationships between citizens and their government. Saudi Arabia is one of the developing countries that provide most of the citizen services to its people. However, the process of attaining these services is not convenient all the time. Citizens are required to skip the office and wait in lines to avail services. It is even more troublesome for women who need a male companion to enter the government facilities (Burn & Robins, 2003). E-government services, therefore, can come handy in Saudi Arabia where citizens can get the job done with just a single click of the mouse. The telecommunication was established in 2001, and in 2003 Ministry of Communication and Technology came into existence. The e-government programme called Yasser was launched in 2005 so that the government of Saudi Arabia could electronically provide services to its citizens (Devadoss, et al. 2002). The aim of the Yesser project is to provide electronic services to all the computer literate and Internet users in the country. By 2010, Yasser envisioned to provide world-class services that would be easy and secure for all the users to avail in Saudi Arabia. The present research aims to investigate the level of satisfaction users attain after using the portal to seek e-government services. The researcher is therefore interested in asserting the level of effectiveness and performance of the web portals and evaluating its usability problems. 1.2 Significance of the Subject Although there have been many researchers conducted on a similar topic, not enough research has been done to address some key issues regarding the implementation of the e-government program. A better understanding need to be made in understanding the need and urgency of the adoption of e-government systems by the authorities and it is also imperative to understand the factors that influence the performance and effectiveness of these systems. The present research therefore, provides a synthesis of the existing empirical findings and a theoretical perspective related to e-government implementation. Besides, it presents a conceptual framework that reflects the acceptance and use of e-government systems effectively 1.3 Literature The literature review consists of some of the ideas, theories, and opinions suggested from the authors in the past. E-government E-government is one of the most effective tools for government to provide its people, business sector and other interested parties with all the forms, billing facilities and other information that it needs. The advantage of e-government is that the government handles it, and so there is no problem with the trust issue. It is not expected from a government to mislead its citizens and any other sector. E-government is very important especially in those countries where the government is in control of all the major industries (Colesca, 2015). The government of China, India, and Saudi Arabia, for example, handle all the important services from electricity, water and gas to other services like passport and driving license. E-government portal does not only provide information but also have facilities for filling the forms and getting the services as a passport or identification card by mail to their homes. It cuts down the process of going all the way to government head offices, filling out the forms and then again travelling to acquire the passports or identification cards. Most of the American and European countries have adopted this technology and are seeing great improvements. Attaining everything online helps to systematically feed the data rather than acquiring data on a piece of paper and then filing it (Ndou, 2004). It also results in fewer mistakes. Framework and Standards The model of Alshehri, et al. (2012) explain that e-government services make the government visible to its people. The citizens know how the government is spending and what the future plans are. Alshehri, et al. (2012) explain that providing e-government services makes the government less corrupt as the government knows that they have to be accountable to their citizen and cannot overstate the numbers and figures. Alshehri, et al. (2012)explain that it is very beneficial for the citizens as they know the future schemes or projects taken by the government. The model explains that an effective e-government program deals with selecting the services a government thinks that are mandatory to provide. For example, China’s growing population serves a need for the government to inform the citizen about the budget set for education and the increase in numbers of students that would be provided education annually. These figures not only help to see the progress made by the government but also alert the citizens of the opportunity available for them to avail. Assessment It is very important to assess the performance of e-government to see how it is doing with the citizens and other platforms across. Investigating how well it is doing with citizens, businesses, and other sectors could assess e-government. One way to do this is by checking how well the government had managed to serve the people using electric systems compared to the days when they used to handle all the requests manually. It can be attained through different types of data (Cairns et al., 2002). Comparison could be made by investigating how much time it used to previously take the government to provide a service for making an identity card, passport or even paying a bill online and how much time it takes them to pay the bill or fill out the forms for identity cards and passports. Other than that, the performance can also be assessed by investigating the amount of time it takes a business to study all the policies of the government compared to the time they had to acquire all the guidelines from the government offices. Portals The portals have to be designed in a way that it becomes easy for the citizens, business sectors, and other governments to acquire data. Not everyone that uses a computer can handle complicated websites. A portal should be user-friendly and should contain all the information in an organized way. It should clearly mention all the fields that the citizens are most likely to view for example in e-government passport information there should be a column saying ‘forms’ so that the citizens can go there, download it and easily apply for their passports. E-government portals should mostly consist of only the necessary information rather than a lot of data. Most user-friendly websites have bold headings so that people from all ages can view it. Other than that they are beautifully designed so that it is easy to read the information that it displays (Gil-Garcia &Pardo, 2005). ISO/YC 211 and ANSI are some of the standards that form a benchmark for the standard portals. These standards are encouraged to be adopted by all the e-business users. These standards specify the colour of the background, fonts and other details that makes a portal looks pleasant. Saudi e-government program The Saudi e-government program depends on how well it eases the process for every member of the country. It is very troublesome for women to acquire government services and so an e-government program would help to get greatly the job done for women from the comfort of their home. The e-government program would also help the government to be more accountable to the people and the government by displaying all the financials on their websites (Dawes &Pardo, 2004). Moreover, one of the major concerns in the past has been the handling of illegal online activities. Betting sites and illegal games like poker have been previously created and maintained by private owners, which is against the sovereignty of the country. If the Saudi government takes charge of building all the online games, then there would not be any such problems emerging in the country. Project Objectives The ultimate aim of the research is to measure the efficiency and performance of the e-government portals in Saudi Arabia, which will be achieved by the help of the following objectives: To review the literature on e-government with primary focus on e-portals. To identify main factors and key elements for portals development. To compare available frameworks and standards with existing portals in Saudi Arabia. To apply template for number of exciting portal Proposed Research Methodology The research is a systematic literature review that focuses on the research questions by identifying, selecting and appraising all the possible evidence for that particular research question. Thus, a systematic literature review is a step-by-step process of extracting information related to the research questions. The first step in the research is to decide what type of research design has to be carried forward. For this study, a phenomenological design will be appropriate. Phenomenological design allows studying phenomena through secondary sources. Information about e-portals will be gathered to see how they work. The criteria that will be used for selecting sources is the identification of themes related to the topic. The research will initiate from studies and models prescribing the role of e-portals of the government. It will then be narrowed down to the role of e-portals of Saudi government. These sources will be reviewed and vital information will be collected on the basis of the themes identified from the review of existing literature. These pieces of information will then be subjected to the thematic analysis to draw important and meaningful findings related to the research questions set out in the proposed study. In this way, a qualitative research involving systematic literature review of the literature related to the research topic will be conducted. Research Philosophy The systematic literature review will follow a constructivist research approach. A constructivist research approach is the process of understanding the process of how a phenomenon works. It helps to understand how things react. For example, the reaction of citizens to the portal will be the way they are designed and the information they carry in them .Secondary data like case studies will help to explain how effective portals have been and how citizens have reacted while using them. Research Design The information collected from different sources will be analysed using an appropriate method of analysis. There is an element of subjectivity in this form of analysis (Balnaves&Caputi, 2011). However, efforts will be made to present information that is relevant and sufficient to form meaningful conclusions for the research questions set out in the study and evaluated if the people are satisfied with the quality of the portals available to them and to see how successful the e-government services have been in the recent past. Research Analysis A systematic literature review carefully examines vital pieces of information to be collected from different secondary sources including journal articles, periodicals, government websites, reports, surveys, etc. Case studies that contain detailed information about the portals in Saudi Arabia will be utilized for the research. Thematic analysis will be applied, which is a research technique that identifies keywords in the literature and then focuses to build the entire study on those keywords. Keywords or themes are selected from the literature and then compared to the case studies to see how effective the portals of Saudi Arabia are to the rest of the world (Guest, 2011) List of References Alshehri, M., Drew, S. & Alfarraj, O., 2012. A Comprehensive Analysis of E-government services adoption in Saudi Arabia: Obstacles and Challenges. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 3(2), pp. 66-79. Burn, J. & Robins, G., 2003. Moving towards e-government: a case study of organisational change processes. The Emerald Research Register , 16(1), pp. 25-35. Cairns, G., Wright, G. & Bradfield, R., 2002. Developing fully functional E-government: A four stage model. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 7(5), p. 1–22. Chen, Y.-C. & Gant, J., 2001. Transforming local e-government services: the use of application service providers. Government Information Quarterly, 11(4), p. 343–355. Colesca, S. E., 2015. Understanding Trust in e-Government. Engineering Economics, 63(4), pp. 114-132. Dawes, S. S. & Pardo, T. A., 2004. Designing electronic government information access programs: a holistic approach. Government Information Quarterly , 8(2), p. 3–23. Devadoss, P. R., Pan, S. & Huang, J. C., 2002. Structurational analysis of e-government initiatives:. Decision Support Systems , 12(2), p. 253– 269. Gil-Garcia, J. R. & Pardo, T. A., 2005. E-government success factors: Mapping practical tools to theoretical foundations. Government Information Quarterly, 11(3), pp. 187-216. Ndou, V., 2004. E-Government for Developing Countries. Department of Business Admisnistration , 14(5), pp. 1-24. University of Natal, 2003. Information and communication technology and local governance. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 5(1), pp. 33-61. Wimmer, M. A., 2002. A European perspective towards online one-stop government: the eGov project. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 7(1), p. 92–103. Read More