Essay preview
Evaluation of E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES in bahrain
BY
ALI ABDULJALIL ABBAS ALZAKI
Project Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Information Technology
SUPERVISED BY
Prof. Dr. SIDDEEQ AMEEN
Open University Malaysia
June 2009
Evaluation of E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES
in bahrain
BY
ALI ABDULJALIL ABBAS ALZAKI
Project Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Information Technology
SUPERVISED BY
Prof. Dr. SIDDEEQ AMEEN
Open University Malaysia
June 2009
Abstract
This is a study about e-government services provided by Bahrain government. The purpose of this study is improving the efficiency and effectiveness of e-government services in Bahrain. The objectives of the study are: 1. To determine citizens' expectations regarding e-government services in Bahrain. 2. To improve Bahrain’s e-government services which are provided mainly via e-government portal (www.e.gov.bh). 3. To determine and enhance the security services that can be used to secure e-government services. The instrument that used in the study is a questionnaire. The sample of the study involves 421 citizens who have been selected randomly and it includes both male and females , various ages and different educational levels. According to the survey result, about 48% of the respondents who use e-government services are in the age group “18-27” and there is a negative relationship between respondents’ ages and e-government usage. As people getting older, their usage of e-government services decrease. The study showed that most citizens(75%) do not use e-government services regularly. Most of them have used e–government for the service “Smart Card appointment” but the service that is used most frequently is “Graduates exam results”. The study shows that the common issue requiring more attention is the general lack of knowledge of some important security issues although there is a high level of awareness about other important issues. Finally, we suggested some recommendations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of e-government services.
Acknowledgement
This thesis could not have been written without my supervisor Prof. Dr. Siddeeq Ameen who provided timely and instructive comments and evaluation at every stage of the thesis which allowed me to complete the project on schedule. Also I wish to thank my family, my relatives, and my friends who encouraged and supported me throughout my study. Finally, I wish to thank the respondents of my study. Their insights and comments created an interesting project with opportunities for future work.
Ali Alzaki
June 1, 2009
OPEN UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA
CENTRE FOR GRADUATIES STUDIES
APPLICATION TO CONDUCT RESEARCH PROJECT
PART A: ABOUT THE STUDENT
Name: Ali Abduljalil Abbas Alzaki
ID: 51060221
PART B: PARTICULARS ABOUT THE PROJECT
1.Title of the project: Evaluation of E-government Services in Bahrain. 2. The purpose: The purpose of this study is improving the efficiency and effectiveness of e-government services in Bahrain. 3. Research Objectives:
i. To determine citizens' expectations regarding e-government services in Bahrain. ii. To improve Bahrain’s e-government services which are provided mainly via e-government portal(www.e.gov.bh). iii. To determine and enhance the security services that can be used to secure e-government services. 4. Population and Sample: the population involve only Bahraini citizens which includes 529,000 citizens (the total of the population of Bahrain is 1,046,000 including 517,000 foreigners). The sample involves 421 citizens. Their ages are 18 or more. All the respondents should be Internet users , and they will be chosen randomly. 5. Instruments to be used: The instrument that will be used in the study is a questionnaire.
PART C: FUCULITY'S INPUTS
Supervisor’s Signature: ______________
OPEN UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA
CENTRE FOR GRADUATES STUDIES
PROJECT PAPER APPROVAL FORM
Project Paper Title: Evaluation of E-government Services in Bahrain
Name of Student: Ali Abduljalil Abbas Alzaki
ID: 51060221
Director
Centre of Graduate Studies
Open University Malaysia
Dear Sir,
Attached are the following documents for your evaluation and approval:
i) Chapter 1: Introduction.
ii) Chapter 2: Literature Review.
iii) Chapter 3: Research Methodology.
iv) Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Results.
v) Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendations.
vi) References.
vii) Appendices.
I have thoroughly checked my work and 1 am confident that it is free from major grammatical errors, weaknesses in sentence constructions, spelling mistakes, referencing mistakes and others. I have checked with CGS Guideline for Writing Project Papers and I am satisfied that my project paper proposal satisfies most of its requirements.
Thank You,
Student's Signature:ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
I have read the student’s project and I am satisfied that it is in line with the CGS Guideline for writing project proposal It is also free from major grammatical errors, sentence construction weaknesses, citation and others.
Supervisor's Signature:___________________
DECLARATION
Name: Ali Abduljalil Abbas Alzaki
ID: 51060221
I hereby declare that this project paper is the result of my own work, except for quotations and summaries which have been duty acknowledged.
Signature:ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ Date: ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………....... i Acknowledgement…………………………………………………………………………….. ii Application to conduct research project……………………………..……………………… iii Project paper approval form………………….……………………………………………… iv Declaration……………………………………………………………………………………… v Table of contents…………………………………………………………………………….... vi List of figures………………………………………………………………………………… viii
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background …………...…………………………………...………………………..………...1 1.2 Problem statement……………………………………………………………………………..4 1.3 Purpose of the study……………………..…………………………………………………….6 1.4 Thesis layout…………………………………………………………………………………..7
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction……………………..……………………………………………………………..8 2.2 Terminologies…...……………………………………………………………………….……8 2.3 Types of e-government partnerships…………………………………………………………..9 2.3.1 Government-citizens relationship……………………………………………………….....10 2.3.2 E-citizens expectation………………………………………………………...……………10 2.4 The goals of E-Government………………….………………………………………………12 2.5 E-Government components………………………...……………….………………………13 2.6 UN recommendations for E-Government………………….………………………………..14 2.7 E-Government and citizens’ requirements….………………………………………………..14 2.8 Challenges to E-Government………………………………………………………………...15 2.9 Security…………….………………………………………………………………………...17 29.1 Security Services……………………………………………………………………………18
CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..19 3.2 Quantitative and qualitative research……………………………………………………..….19 3.3 Research strategy………………………………………………………………...…………..20 3.4 Population and Sample selection…………...……………………………………………......20 3.5 Data collection……………………………………………………………………………….20 3.6 Data Analysis……………….…………………………………………………………….….21 3.7 Reliability and validity………………………………………………………………………22 3.8 Focused region………….……………………………………………………………………23 3.8.1 Bahrain e-Government Vision……………………………………………………...……...23 3.9 The instrument…………………………………………………………………………..…...24 3.9.1 The questionnaire and its formulation……………………………………………………..25
CHAPTER IV: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
4.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..30 4.2 Respondents based on gender and different age groups ………………………………….…30 4.3 Internet usage……………………………………………………………………………...…32 4.4 E-government usage………………………………………………….………………………34 4.5 Trust in E-Government services…………………………………………………………..…36 4.6 Barriers in implementing E-Government services…………………………………………...42 4.7 Suggested E-Government Services…………………………………………………………..43 4.8 E-Government security………………………………………………………………………43 4.8.1 Security terms………………………………………………………...……………………44
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...……64 5.2 Recommendations…………………………………………………………………….……...65
REFERENCES………………………………………………………………..………………...66
Appendices……………………………………………………………..……………………71
LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE PAGE
Figure (1): respondents based on different age groups.________________________________ 31
Figure (2): respondents based on gender.___________________________________________31
Figure (3): frequency of internet usage.____________________________________________ 32
Figure (4): frequency of internet usage based on gender._______________________________33
Figure (5): comparison between the different age group and the frequency of internet usage.__33
Figure (6): have you ever used any e-services provided by government of Bahrain?_________ 34
Figure (7): e-government usage based on gender.____________________________________ 35
Figure (8): e-government usage based on age groups._________________________________35
Figure (9): e-government services used by respondents._______________________________ 37
Figure (10): e-government services used most frequently.______________________________38
Figure (11): frequency of e-government usage.______________________________________ 39
Figure (12): I prefer using governmental services online.______________________________ 40
Figure (13): I prefer using government service online. A comparison based on gender.______ 40
Figure (14): I trust in e-government services.________________________________________41
Figure (15): I trust in e-government services. A comparison based on gender._____________ 41
Figure (16): do you think, there are barriers in implementing governmental e-services in Bahrain?__42
Figure (17): what do you think about the security term “authentication”?__________________44
Figure (18): what do you think about the security term “authentication”? based on gender ___ 45
Figure (19): what do you know about the security term "authorization"?__________________46
Figure (20): what do you know about the security term "authorization"? based on age._______46
Figure (21): what do you think about the security term “access control”?__________________47
Figure (22): what do you think about the security term “non-repudiation”?________________48
Figure (23): what do you think about the security term “confidentiality”?_________________ 49
Figure (24): what do you think about the security term “denial of services attack”?__________50
Figure (25): an example of denial service attack._____________________________________51
Figure (26): what do you think about the security term “virus”?_________________________53
Figure (27): what do you think about the security term “Trojan/Trojan horse”?_____________53
Figure (28): how a firewall works to protects e-government. ___________________________54
Figure (29): what do you think about the security term “firewall”?_______________________54
Figure (30): what do you think about the security term “hacker”?________________________56
Figure (31): what do you think about the security term “digital signature”?________________57
Figure (32): what do you think about the security term “digital watermarking”?____________58
Figure (33): what do you think about the security term “phishing”?______________________59
Figure (34): what do you think about the security term “IP spoofing”?____________________61
Figure (35): what do you think about the security term “password selection”?______________62
Figure (36): what do you think about the security term “Intrusion detection”?_____________ 63
Figure (37): what do you think about the security term “encryption”?____________________ 63
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
e-Government is a key instrument for modernization and reform as governments face the continuing pressure of increasing their performance and adapting to the pressure of the new information society (McLean and Jelassi, 2004). The ability to improve citizens’ access to services has made e-Government an attractive investment for government organizations, fuelling worldwide implementation of such applications. Electronic government, or e-Government, is enabling government organizations to provide better services to their constituents. Transactions such as filing taxes online, applying for jobs, renewing driver’s licenses, and ordering recreational and occupational licenses can now be conducted online, quickly and efficiently (West, 2002). As many public sector organizations are either planning for or implementing major e-Government projects, there is a growing need to understand how these projects can be successfully managed for maximum realization of their potential benefits (Lee, 2005). Good, reliable trustworthy public services built around the needs of the citizen are essential to a modern, fair and dynamic society(Pinder, 2004). Government services are expected to be socially inclusive. This means that all citizens who want to must have ready access to these services. It also means that all such citizens must have the ability to use the system and also feel confident using it. This presents enormous challenges to government as it implies ready access to computers and an adequate degree of ICT literacy. E- government more than an automation of government services information society commission. In developing e-Government services, the readiness of citizen groups to use self-service channels must be taken into account, as must the complexity and requirements of the service. A high proportion of interactions between citizens and the public service are in the areas of health and social services where citizens tend to be elderly, in poor health and of lower educational and income backgrounds. Many of these will require assistance in accessing public services, either at front desks or over the telephone. They may not be in a position to benefit from a self-service channel where the citizen has to do much of the work of data entry.
The centrality of the citizen is the key concept in the provision of e-government. Modern technologies have the potential to create seamless, responsive and citizen-centric government for the benefit of all. This can free the citizen from the need to understand the complex structures of government in order to be able to deal effectively with it. However, it also requires that government embrace the concept of a single integrated delivery channel that enables the citizen to access the exact information or government service required. Such a development has the potential to transform the relationship between the citizen and government. By providing quality service, promoting transparent and accountable government, and enabling the citizens to engage with the public policy process, e-government helps build trust between the citizen and government. Such trust is an essential element in giving people the confidence to use online systems, and in good governance generally(ibid). E-government has lagged behind general e-commerce. e-commerce, the private sector’s version of conducting business electronically, paved the way for e-government and was, in many ways, the catalyst for it. Early e-Government was often limited to non-transactional information or transactions with businesses. Only static information, such as instructions about obtaining building permits or a brief history of a municipality, was included on a website. Government-to- business (G2B) transactions were the first type of actual online transactions. Commonly, these transactions involved large-scale procurement and were usually confined to closed networks (www.archives.nysed.gov). Governments worldwide are dedicating the effects to deliver their services easily and more flexible in ways that meet the needs of citizens they serve and also the businesses in order to enable them to interact securely at the time that are convenient to them. E-government is the way to do this. E-government is the ability for government “to provide non-stop government information services”(Obaidat, & Boudriga,2007). The term e-Government (e-Gov) emerged in the late 1990s, but the history of computing in government organizations can be traced back to the beginnings of computer history. A literature on “IT in government”, goes back at least to the 1970s. (Kraemer, et al, 1978, Danziger, and Andersen, 2002).The e-Government was born out of the Internet boom. However, it is not limited to Internet use or publicly accessible systems for direct use by customers or citizens.(Gore, 1993).E-Government refers to the use by government agencies of information technologies that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. These technologies can serve a variety of different ends: better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management. The resulting benefits can be less corruption, increased transparency, greater convenience, revenue growth, and/or cost reductions” (World Bank, 2004). Developments in Europe and the rest of the world create challenges for the public sector. On the one hand, citizens and businesses have high expectations of accessible and efficient services and administration. On the other, limited or reducing resources. e-Government is an enabler to realize better and more efficient administration. Public e-Services (e-Government services for citizens and businesses) are a part of e-Government, which specifically holds a potential for developing more efficient and user-centered ways to deliver public services. Citizens are increasingly expecting government units to perform more like commercial entities. In order to provide various service levels and to meet rising expectations, government needs to utilize recent advances in technological development(Reynolds & Regio, 2004) .West defines e-Government as the delivery of government information and services online through the Internet or other digital means. West, in his study, states that the particular characteristic of this system, that makes it so special, is that it allows citizens to seek public services at their own convenience and not just when the government office is open(West, 2004). While defining the domain of e-Government, has identified the importance of serving civil society by delivering services to wide array of citizens (Grönlund, 2005). Related to citizen services, there have been widespread recommendations that these services have to satisfy customer or citizen needs - leading them to be customer-centric or citizen-centric (Scott et al, 2005) .To achieve the full public value for society from e-Government, decision makers must understand the full scope of the transformation of public services. Governments should seek to involve all stakeholders in the design and implementation of the transformation of public services. Any kind of change to public services utilizing new or existing technology needs to be properly understood and planned. In order to ensure that full consideration is given to assessing and understanding the impact of new technology on private citizens, employees, and business, European Information, Communications and Consumer Electronics Technology Industry Associations (EICTA) proposes that all these stakeholders should be closely and deeply involved in the development of the inclusive e-Government agenda. Governments should focus on developing interoperable, secure and compatible services for citizens and businesses in strategic areas, such as Security, Taxation, Health, European procurement, and Education. Industry calls upon Governments to give special attention to such service in 2006 (www.egov2005conference.gov.uk). The five stages of E-government are:
• First Stage: Emerging Presence. In this stage, the country establishes a Web presence through select government Web site with static information. • Second Stage: Enhanced Presence. In this stage, the number of governments’ websites increases and the information contained in the websites are updated regularly. This may includes publications, newsletters, a search engine, and e-mail. • Third Stage: Interactive Presence. In this stage, many services and interactions are possible , and also it contains a large number of government agencies. Furthermore, data downloading, document submission, message posting are possible. • Fourth Stage: Transactional Presence. In this Stage, various government transactions can be done online. These include passport and visa applications, fees, taxes, birth and death certificate requests, and fines. Furthermore, many other more complicated functions can be done in this stage such as digital signatures, encryption and passwords. • Fifth Stage: Seamless. This is the most advanced stage. In this stage, all services all services can be accessed instantly from one portal. This means total integration of all services across administrative and departmental boundaries (Pavlichev, &Garson,2004). E-government security is one of the most important factor for achieving an advanced stage of e-government. Building confidence and trust in e-government is a main issue that concerns e-governments developers. In order to deploy a secure e-government, it is necessary to develop a secure electronic environment for such applications in view of exchanging government e-mail and accessing repositories of government information for authorized public servants and citizens. This environment can further be leveraged upon to develop shared applications, business processes, and workflow systems that enhance the performance of public administration (Mitrakas, 2007). 1.2 Problem Statement
Citizens should be able to get service or information in minutes or hours, versus today’s standard of days or weeks. Citizens, businesses and state and local governments should be able to find required reports without having to hire accountants and lawyers. Government employees should be able to do their work as easily, efficiently and effectively as their counterparts in the commercial world. The challenge for governments is how to move on from focusing on service delivery to providing people-centered tools and applications. This means placing priority not just on how they delivery services to citizens, but using e-Government to enrich the lives of its citizens. e-Government should also be employed to improve the way public servants use public resources to support the society (Kerby, 2005). The movement to e-Government, at its heart, is about changing the way people and businesses interact with government. It only makes sense to find out what they want, expect, don’t want, and worry about (Cook, 2000). Turn on the radio or television or open a magazine or newspaper and, chances are, you will see an advertisement or story about the Web. Today, most organizations, including state agencies and local governments, maintain websites. (www.archives.nysed.gov). More and more customers have access to the Web at home, work, school and other locations. With an increase in your citizens using the Web, you will see that you’ve reached the critical mass necessary to make e-Government service delivery viable. There are still, however, those that do not have access to the Web. Typically, traditional over-the-counter transactions cost more than those conducted via the Internet. Counter transactions often consume more staff time and more paper supplies (including printing) than electronic transactions. Internet transactions can be less expensive but they entail costs of their own, including credit card transaction fees. As the online population grows and more e-Commerce is conducted online, customers expect governments to have an Internet presence and online transactions. Customers have more demands for their time. Commuting times and distances to work have increased. The prevalence of dual-income families has increased too. Thus, customers are not often able to visit government offices during normal office hours. Customers want access to government services when it is convenient to them, particularly after regular working hours, and 24/7 (twenty-four hours a day / seven days a week) e-Government may be the solution to this problem (ibid). e-Government projects target a wide range of topics, including infrastructure development, the legal environment surrounding e-Government development, policies (national, regional, local), digital divide issues, literacy, education, accessibility, trust (in technology as well as in government), transparency, interoperability (among government agencies), managing records, sustainability, public-private cooperation/partnerships, cost structures, and incentives. While most of these topics are found in developed as well as in developing countries, in the latter more attention is paid to issues like telecommunications liberalization, ICT sector development and investment, trade promotion, local software and content generation, satellite technology, telemedicine and healthcare, and local development through for example development of telecentres (AISI, 2004) .E-government has been employed by developed as well as developing countries to be an enabler toward accelerating processes, delivering a higher level of service to citizens and businesses, increasing transparency and accountability while lowering costs. Additionally, in developing countries it has been recognized as an enabler toward catapulting governments in to the 21st century while leapfrogging multiple generations of technology. Therefore citizens have different e-service requirements from e-Government e.g. reviewing a driver license, cheaper and easy services etc. We can conclude from above discussion, it is important to understand requirements from citizen, so this is important what e-Services are required by the citizens. We are going to describe different challenges based on what citizens are looking for from e-Government. On the other hand, E-government services security is one of the most factors for achieving successful e-government services. As we mentioned earlier, In e-government, there are various partnerships with the government. All these relationships and communications needs security to face the threats. Various types of attacks which can target e-government website. For example, when a citizens want to pay the taxes via the e-government, they wants to insure that their transactions are safe and their credit cards accounts also are safe. Also citizens and other partners want to insure that their information are safe. In other word, they want to insure that “privacy” is exist. 1.3 Purpose of the study
The purpose of the study is improving the efficiency and effectiveness of e-government services in Bahrain. The success of e-Government project is primarily associated with the understanding needs of citizens and addressing them through ease. Kingdom of Bahrain is a developing country and careful allocation of budgets should be made in any project because resources are limited. e-Government can be discussed from different aspects like what e-Services are needed, what are the expectations from the society and how it can be made more effective? It is very hard to grasp and discuss about its all issues. Hence we are going to focus its primary participants - citizens and their relevant e-Services. Citizens have to communicate with the government in their routines and activities. In this regard they use different tasks and services provided by the government either manually or online e.g. paying taxes, casting vote, registering child birth etc. It results, consuming more time and money to use such services. The government should be able to know what services are required by the citizens so one of is to find out various expectations regarding e-Services within e-Government from Bahraini citizens. The Objectives of the study are:
1. To determine citizens' expectations regarding e-government services in Bahrain. 2. To improve Bahrain’s e-government services which are provided mainly via e-government portal (www.e.gov.bh). 3. To determine and enhance the security services that can be used to secure e-Government services. e-governments projects are growing across the world. The study is providing more confidence to e-government’s partners and make them satisfied with e-government services. As the project of e-government of Bahrain started...