Improving the quality of mobile government services in the Gulf Cooperation Council. A quality-function-deployment approach
| Date | 11 March 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-11-2017-0116 |
| Published date | 11 March 2019 |
| Pages | 146-164 |
| Author | Meiaad Rashid Alsaadi,Syed Zamberi Ahmad,Matloub Hussain |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Information & communications technology |
Improving the quality of mobile
government services in the
Gulf Cooperation Council
A quality-function-deployment approach
Meiaad Rashid Alsaadi,Syed Zamberi Ahmad and
Matloub Hussain
Abu Dhabi University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of thestudy is to provide a concrete, integrated plan to improvethe service quality
of mobile government (m-government) services from the customer perspective in the Gulf Cooperation
Council.
Design/methodology/approach –A quantitative approach was used to analyze a case study of the
UAE Ministry of Interior (MOI) mobileapplication and a competitor: the MOI application of the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia.Data were collected using a focus group.
Findings –Results show that the technical requirement“real time”has the highest priority for deployment
and “tangibleservice”has the lowest priority.
Research limitations/implications –Findings are limited to m-governmentservices. Further studies
could exploreother government services such as traditional face-to-faceservices.
Practical implications –Results imply that if government decision-makers or software developers aim
to understand customer requirements and improve their mobile services accordingly, the quality-function-
deployment (QFD) approachis much more effective than traditional approaches in which decisions regarding
servicesare prioritized based on the decision-makers or software developers’perspectives.
Originality/value –Many previousstudies have applied QFD for developing productsbased on customer
needs. This, however, is one of the few studies to successfully apply the QFD matrix to m-government
services.
Keywords United Arab Emirates, House of quality, Gulf Cooperation Council,
Quality function deployment, Technology innovation, Mobile government
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Mobile government (m-government) is the ability of the government to provide services through
mobile devices, through wireless technology, to improve the level of interaction with its citizens
and provide high-quality services (Abaza and Saif, 2015;Abdelghaffar and Magdy, 2012;Al-
Hubaishi et al., 2017). One of the greatest advantages of moving toward to m-government
services is the opportunity to provide public services to citizens in any place and at any time
(Abu-Shanab and Haider, 2015); other advantages include accessibility, user proximity, real-time
information exchange and the immediacy of messages (Vincent and Harris, 2008).
Shareef et al. (2014) reported that m-government has been accepted in several countries
around the world to deliver servicesto citizens through mobile technology with impressive
efficiency and effectiveness,and that m-government can be considered as a new, alternative
means of providing public services. In the Middle East, the Gulf CooperationCouncil (GCC)
JSIT
21,1
146
Received26 November 2017
Revised7 March 2018
31August 2018
Accepted20 November 2018
Journalof Systems and
InformationTechnology
Vol.21 No. 1, 2019
pp. 146-164
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1328-7265
DOI 10.1108/JSIT-11-2017-0116
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1328-7265.htm
countries (United Arab Emirates [UAE], Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [KSA], Oman, Qatar,
Kuwait and Bahrain) started to adopt m-government in 2013, when they first began to
provide public servicesthrough mobile technology (Emiratesnewswire,2014). This approach
was taken to overcome the challenges faced by citizens for several years regarding the
difficulties of accessing public services (Al-Rajehi, 2007). Citizens had been increasingly
forced to deal with many organizations to complete one service, and the time needed to
complete each service transaction had been steadily increasing (Khaleej Times,2015).
Alrabghi (2013) stated thatthe main challenge in implementing m-government services is to
provide a high quality of services that meet customer requirements and increase customer
satisfaction.Notably, Shareef et al. (2014) found that the key reason for failingto improve the
quality of m-governmentservices was not identifying customers’needs.
Competition has arisen between the GCC’s governments to implement the m-government
services of the highest quality (Khaleej Times, 2015). This competition has led to huge progress,
and it can now be argued that the GCC is at the cutting edge of providing public m-government
services to their citizens (Innovationandtech,2016).Results published by the United Nations (UN)
showed that the UAE was ranked first among GCC countries for implementing m-government
services, followed by Bahrain, the KSA, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman (Innovationandtech, 2016).
Despite the success in implementing m-government services in GCC countries, citizen still use
traditional, i.e. face-to-face or office-based, public service channels (Khaleej Times, 2015). To
increase the percentage of citizens using m-government services, m-government leaders and
software developers should focus on improving the quality of m-government services based on
citizens’expectations (Al-Hubaishi et al.,2017;Zheng and Pulli, 2012). Ahmad and Khalid (2017)
argued that designing and implementing the highest quality of m-government service provision
requires citizen’s participation to develop effective services that meet citizens’needs.
One of the most powerful methods to identify and translate customer requirements is
quality-function-deployment (QFD) (Zheng and Pulli, 2012). QFD is a structured approach
used to define customer requirements or needs and translate them into technical
requirements, with specific implementation plan for developing or improving product or
services that meet those needs (Hussain et al.,2011). The main advantage of using QFD is
that it focuses on both the visible and invisible needs of the customer (Glenn, 1993). The
purpose of the presentstudy is, therefore, to answer the following questions:
Q1. What are the customer requirements for improving m-government service quality
in the GCC?
Q2. What are the technical requirements neededto meet these customer requirements?
Q3. How can these requirements help m-government decision-makers and software
developers formulate a strategic plan for improving m-government services in the
GCC?
This study adds valuein several ways:
It is the first research to establish a technique for applying a QFD approach to
improve the quality of m-government services.
It explores customers’expectations by identifying customer requirements, in the
m-government services context, in the GCC.
It identifies critical areas of m-government service provision by determining the technical
descriptors of m-government services to improve the quality of customer service.
Mobile
government
services
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