Influence of citizen-centric perspective on the effectiveness of e-governance systems in Malaysia

• Main Author: Jafari, Seyed Mohammadbagher
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/31658/1/GSM%202012%208R.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/31658/

The rapid evolution of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has created challenges and opportunities for governments all over the world. Nowadays,many citizens are turning to electronic communities. On the other hand, the government costs too much, delivers too little, and is not sufficiently responsive or accountable. These are the push factors for every government to improve its relationship with citizens via advanced technologies. Today, e-government and egovernance are key issues on the agenda of various governments across the world.However, the effectiveness of e-governance systems is contingent upon designing these systems based on citizens‘ values and needs. Nevertheless, the actual needs,values and objectives of citizens receive minor consideration in current egovernance literature. The current approach in e-governance design is more topdown view, techno-centric and focuses on efficiency output). There is a strong need for change in e-governance design practice from top-down to bottom-up design. The new approach should be citizen-centric and focuses on effectiveness (outcome,impact) of the systems. Based on this perspective, the citizens‘ needs and values on e-governance have to be put first to make these systems effective. This study is an attempt to explore and propose the needs and values of citizens on e-governance systems based on the determinants of information system (IS) success in the DeLone and McLean 2003 (D&M 2003) model of IS success. After conducting a systematic and comprehensive literature review, this study identified new determinants of egovernance success and proposed the citizen-centric e-governance effectiveness model. Using a survey method, 356 valid questionnaires were collected from Malaysian citizens with prior experience on government online services. The structural equation modeling (SEM) technique has been used to evaluate the hypothesized model. The results stress the special importance of information quality,system quality (ease of use, presentation and functionality), service quality-citizen relationship management and public trust in determining citizens‘ intention to use egovernance systems and their satisfaction with these systems. Moreover, the importance roles of service quality-security and policy environment and regulation as the antecedents of public trust in e-governance systems have been determined. The results also show that access to ICT has a mediating effect between intention to use and the actual use of e-governance systems by the citizens. In addition, the findings highlight the influential roles of actual use and citizens‘ satisfaction with egovernance systems on their perceived net benefit from these systems. The empirical examination shows that the proposed model has high predictive power on the intention to use, the actual use and satisfaction with e-governance systems by citizens. This study adds to the body of knowledge on citizen-centric e-governance systems. Moreover, it sheds some new insights into D&M 2003 IS success model in e-governance context by finding the factors that represents the citizens‘ needs and values on these systems and proposing a respecified and extended model. This model gives a better understanding on the multidimensional and interdependent nature of citizens-centric e-governance systems success and demonstrates the dynamics of the relationships among the important constructs determining the effectiveness of these systems. With this understanding, governments, system developers and practitioners are in a better position not only to identify the needs and values of citizens toward e-governance systems but also to focus on the effectiveness in order to improve the overall success of e-governance systems.