Citizens’ Adoption of E-government: Guidelines for the Government

By combining the findings from the survey of both users and non-users, guidelines for government to foster citizens to use e-government services can be proposed. The proposed guidelines below are based on the main six factors that were presented earlier in this study.

 Perceived usefulness: perceived usefulness is identified as the most influential factors on citizens’

behavioral intention to use e-government.It is important that the government re-evaluate its services in terms of the benefit that citizens can receive. The government should ensure that its websites provide beneficial services to citizens that are competitive to the traditional way of providing the same services. This can be achieved through providing services that can be handled in a short amount of time without any cost and the most important to bear in mind is the citizens’ perceptions about the efforts they may make in order to obtain services. Moreover, the mandatory use of some services may be the key of e-government diffusion. If the mandatory services were valuable for citizens, this will create positive perceptions towards e-government services in general and, thus, extend the scope of use to include the voluntary services. To achieve that, the government should make efforts to increase the citizens’ awareness of the usefulness of the e-government. This may be done by conducting campaigns that introduce the e-government initiative and its key services on a wider scale and explains its benefits and the difference between it and the traditional way. Another way of

171 increasing the citizens’ awareness is that providing an educational chance for citizens, such as improving the ICT education.

 Perceived ease of use: perceived ease of use is identified as an important and influential factor for users and non-users. As mentioned earlier, Saudi citizens are Internet heavy users and the rate of using is growing every year. This means that they are experts in dealing with websites, whether to browse or to conduct a transaction, and they can distinguish whether the service is easy to use or not.

However, despite their internet experience, they prefer to deal with effortless services. Therefore, it is important for the government to make an effort to keep pace with modern technology and build a good image of its services it terms of the ease of use. As mentioned above, this can be done through a campaign that explains how citizens’ friendly are the services. Moreover, the government should take into consideration that the Saudi society is a society that prefers image expressions rather than the written ones. This reflects the ease of use from their perspective. Thus, the government should match their perception by designing a professional websites that attract citizens to use, considering maintain the quality of the services, the security, and the accessibility. Moreover, the government should make more efforts in providing the necessary technical support when needed. This is through providing trained staff capable of providing the best support for the citizens 24 hours in case they face any technical trouble.

 Trustworthiness and perceived corruption: the trust in the internet is an important predictor of the adoption of the e-government services, while the trust in the government is an important indirect factor for the adoption. It is important for the government to make more efforts to increase citizens’

trust in it. The government should explain to the citizens that e-government is linked to what the government seeks to achieve. In other words, the government should also clarify its goals and vision in terms of e-government. It also should clarify to the citizens the importance of e-government services to what the government is trying to reach in order to facilitate the lives of citizens and to improve the economy of the country. This makes the citizen participate in reaching these goals, which increase their trust in the government. It is important for the government to gain the citizens’

trust in e-government. This can be done by improving the security of websites and proving its capability to protect citizens’ privacy electronically. In order to deepen the citizens’ trust in the government, it is important for the government to increase its efforts to show the citizens the transparency of its electronic transactions and decisions. This is through providing guidelines of the rules, the regulations, the method of decision-making, as well as the process that the electronic

172 transaction goes through until it is done. Moreover, provides consulting services would also help creating public relationships between the government and citizens and will make citizens aware of what the government is doing. Government also should improve its communication with the citizens by providing live chat services. This, therefore, will strengthen their trust in the government.

 Social influence: the social influence is an important indirect predictor of the adoption of e-government. Therefore, it is important for the government to make a greater effort to highlight the importance of the e-government and to highlight the advantages of using it. These efforts can be directed towards increasing the citizen’s trust in the government and creating positive perceptions about the usefulness and ease of using the services. Despite that this study ignored the role of social media in the social influence; social media may be an important influential on the citizens’ decision since it can reach a larger number of citizens. Therefore, the government should use the social media as a way for its campaign to provide a better understanding of e-government, what services it offers, and the advantages of using its services for the citizens. It is also important for government to conduct advertising research to deepen its understanding of citizens needs so it can design the perfect campaign. Moreover, the government should provide an online review of its service where citizens can share their opinion about the services. This could strongly influence the citizens’ decision and, therefore, increase the use of e-government services, as suggested by Mo et al., (2015), the online review has a strong influence on the individual’s behavior, especially if the review was a positive one.

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