Evaluation of e-government service in Jordan : providers' and users' perceptions

Efficient and effective implementation and development of e-government services require an understanding of whether these e-government-services are tailored to meet users') expectations under the citizen-centric approach, and what are the barriers that might hamper the achievement of that slogan. This research explores the public eservices from a multi-view or multi -stakeholders' perspective. This includes: the users' perceptions using a conceptual maturity model-61 Model- to investigate empirically the characteristics of the public e-services in Jordan, and the employees' perceptions, who are the providers of the e-government services, to explore the barriers to these public eservices.

The sample to this research was drawn from two sources: users of e-government services, and employees in Jordanian governmental organizations. This research is mainly deductive, and includes a mixed research approach of both quantitative and qualitative methods. A survey approach was employed to achieve the research objectives. Moreover, nine interviews were carried out with both users and providers of e-services to obtain insightful data, and to enhance the interpretation of the quantitative findings. Factor analysis, bivariate analysis, error bars, and graphs were employed to explore and clarify patterns of multifaceted relationships for various perceptions of e-government services in relation to demographic characteristics, and the barriers that impede the development of these services.

The findings reveal that users of e-government services were chiefly critical of the current status, which was identified according to four categories: Inform, Interact, Intercommunicate, and individualize. However, that dissatisfaction has not stopped the users to aspire a desired status of e-government services, which again was identified according to two categories: Integrate, and Involve. Moreover, the providers reveal in their perception of the barriers that five various barriers' categories 'impede the implementation and the progress of e-government services in Jordan. These barriers, which have been identified according to the providers' perception, are: Policy, Economic, Skills, Technical, and Organizational barriers which were explained using a PESTO framework.

Finally the state of play of the Jordanian e-government services was evaluated using the 61 Model to account for the previous two perceptions and establish the relationships between the different perceptions.

Because of the scarcity of any empirical investigation of a theoretical maturity model in general, and within the Jordanian context in particular, this research provides an original contribution concerning the evaluation of e-government services and the barriers that hamper them. Unlike previous studies within developed and developing countries, this research investigates the theoretical maturity model from multi-view stakeholders' to establish an understanding of how to provide effective and efficient e-government services that tailored to attain citizen-centric approach.