Abstract
Thailand and Indonesia are two developing countries still in the early stages of e-government implementation. An understanding of their citizens’ perspectives can help the governments of these countries better plan their services and also provide useful information to governments of other developing countries. The current study uses a new survey instrument to assess the importance of e-government services and website success factors from the perspective of citizens. Using multigroup analysis to validate the instrument, it identifies that an important difference between the perceptions of citizens of the two countries is that in Thailand, the importance of financial transaction services is negatively related to the importance of citizen identification with the e-government site whereas in Indonesia this relationship is insignificant. Only two expected relationships were found to be equivalent across both datasets, i.e., the importance of financial transactions services is positively related to the importance of website efficiency and the importance of local information services is positively related to the importance of citizen identification with the site. The multigroup analysis showed that citizens in both countries interpreted the survey instrument similarly but had very different expectations for their e-government services.
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Appendices
Appendix 1
1.1 Commonly cited e-government services
Providing city/state/country information online
Providing geographic information systems data (infrastructure, costs, demographics) online
Providing government budgets online
Providing city/state/country virtual tours online
Providing minutes of government meetings online
Providing video broadcast of government meetings online
Providing audio broadcast of government meetings online
Providing live broadcast from traffic cameras online
Calling for bids or proposals for government contracts online
Accepting bidder applications for government contracts online
Accepting utility (e.g., electricity, gas and telephone) payments online
Collecting fees online
Collecting fines online
Collecting taxes (individual and business) online
Making payments to government service providers online
Managing government procured inventory online
Accepting citizen/constituent requests for service online
Providing citizens/constituents the ability to track complaints online
Providing permit application and renewal online
Providing license application and renewal online
Providing voter registration online
Accepting requests for government records (e.g. birth and death records) online
Accepting property registration online
Accepting reservations for government facilities online
Providing surveys and polls to gauge citizen/constituent sentiments online
Providing forums and discussion groups for citizens/constituents online
Providing citizens/constituents the ability to communicate electronically with officials
Providing e-mail access for government employees
Providing government employees the ability to schedule meetings online
Providing government employees the ability to manage documents online
Providing government employees the ability to video conference
Providing government employees an intranet to exchange information among agencies
Accepting applications for government jobs online
Providing emergency/disaster management documents, policies and procedures online
Providing government owned educational resources online
Appendix 2
2.1 Commonly cited success features for websites
Accessibility of the website (including accessibility to the poor, uneducated and disabled)
Reliability of the services provided
Reliability of the information provided
Ease of use of the information provided
Appropriateness of the format of the information
Appropriateness of the level of detail of the information
Security of data
Confidentiality of data
Timeliness of information
Service and functionality of the website
Quality of content (completeness, relevance and accuracy)
Visual appeal of the website
User friendliness of the website
Ease of navigation of the website
Ease of use of the website
Enjoyability in use of the website
Ability to receive personal services without interacting with human staff
Ability to exert more control over the delivery of service
Ability to receive service how and when the citizen/constituent wants
Savings in cost for the citizen/constituent and the government
Savings in time by obtaining the service electronically
Ability to tailor the delivery of the service more towards the citizen/constituent
Attractiveness of website’s appearance
Sense of personalization created by the website
Sense of community created by the website
Reputation of the website
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Mirchandani, D.A., Johnson Jr., J.H. & Joshi, K. Perspectives of citizens towards e-government in Thailand and Indonesia: A multigroup analysis. Inf Syst Front 10, 483–497 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-008-9102-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-008-9102-7