Increasing e-government adoption in Malaysia: MyEG case study

Pages202-227
Date14 August 2017
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-01-2017-0007
Published date14 August 2017
AuthorMohd Heikal Husin,Niloufar Loghmani,Siti Salbiah Zainal Abidin
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management,Information systems,Information & communications technology
Increasing e-government adoption
in Malaysia: MyEG case study
Mohd Heikal Husin,Niloufar Loghmani
and Siti Salbiah Zainal Abidin
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor, Malaysia
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims tostudy user acceptance of one of the Malaysian e-governmentservices known
as MyEG via a theoreticalframework. The results are compared to a similar researchconducted in Singapore.
The motivation and benetsderived from this research can be used to improve the overall qualityof services
providedby MyEG and to enhance the efciencyas well as accountability of this e-government service.
Design/methodology/approach This research was conducted by applying a theoretical framework
known as technology acceptancemodel involving several factors such as intention to use, perceived ease of
use, perceived usefulness, image, compatibility and trust. The research data were then validated by
examiningsimilar factors that had signicance results,followed by the development of a simple prototype.
Findings The results obtained from this research would be benecial to enhance the level of adoption
among the citizens in Malaysia. The identicationof the different factors inuencing the acceptancelevels of
users can also provide a better vision on the end-user perspective for MyEG developers and lead them to
achieve better results in future platform developments. In addition, this study also lls the current existing
gap in e-governmentresearch of Malaysia and contributes to the literatureon the public usersperspective of
e-governmentservices.
Practical implications The results from this researchwould provide effective guidance to developers
of e-government platforms to include specic criteria that would attract the general public in using the
platforms.
Social implications Besides that, it providesa new perspective from the general publicon their interest
to use any e-governmentplatform specically MyEG.
Originality/value The ndings of this researchwould assist in the improvement of the implementation
and adoption of the current MyEG system. Besides that, this research will allow researchers to gain new
insights about e-government services and apply the knowledge to further improve the current and other
platformdevelopment.
Keywords Technology acceptance model, Electronic government,
Information technology acceptance, MyEG
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
E-government is a one-stop gatewayto the delivery of national or local government services
via the internet or other digital means to citizens or businesses or other governmental
agencies. It encourages transformation from the traditional bureaucratic paradigm, which
emphasizes standardization, departmentalization and operational cost-efciency, to the
e-governmentparadigm, which emphasizes coordinated network building, external
collaboration and customer services (Tat-Kei Ho, 2002). E-governance refers to how
managers and supervisors use IT and internet to execute their functions of supervising,
planning, organizing, coordinating and stafng effectively (Palvia and Sharma, 2007). In
Malaysia, one of the government agencies, Malaysia Administrative Modernization and
Management Planning Unit, has been entrusted to plan, implement and monitor the
JSIT
19,3/4
202
Received25 January 2017
Revised30 October 2017
Accepted31 October 2017
Journalof Systems and
InformationTechnology
Vol.19 No. 3/4, 2017
pp. 202-227
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1328-7265
DOI 10.1108/JSIT-01-2017-0007
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1328-7265.htm
e-government initiative. Seven applications were designed in Malaysia electronic
government, namely, as e-services, e-procurement, generic ofce environment, Human
Resources Management Information System (HRMIS), project monitoring system,
Electronic Labor Exchange and E-syariah (Norshita et al.,2010). The government can re-
strategize the ways to govern its citizens with the network utilization, in addition as it is a
tool for collaboration to save time and to reduce costs for both citizensand government. The
objectives of thisresearch are to:
identify the existing level of public acceptance to use MyEG service;
compare and discuss the results with similar research on e-services; and
develop suitable guidelines/methods on increasing the acceptance levels of
e-government.
The low level of user acceptance for these services are recognized as a problem for
government policymakers, government agencies and e-government services providers
globally. For instance, one of the online services offered in Taiwanknown as tax ling and
payment system ranked low for its user acceptance rates, even though the Taiwanese
Government tax agency has invested millions of dollars in promoting this service (Hung
et al.,2006). Another research by Kaliannan and Awang (2010) focused on the ICT and
e-government initiatives in Malaysia,but the focus of their work is geared toward business
holders or suppliers. There have been a few major improvements and challenges identied
by the similar existing research within the government systems in Malaysia, but there is a
lack of research that re-strategizes the way of communication between citizens and
government. This means that any enhancementor improvement for the existing traditional
way of communication and services provided by the government to its local citizens is
essential.
For this research, we aim to focus on one of the government platform in Malaysia
e-services known as MyEG. The previous studies suggested that MyEG website can be
further improved in term of user interface design due to its average grade in usability
(Sidek and Teo, 2013), low level for supporting mental model and human information
processing and lack of studies to understand user perception toward using this system.
Similarly, a researcher in Singapore had investigated the key factors precedence in
usefulness of a similar system in Singapore (Phang et al., 2005), but there is a lack of
understanding of user intention to use the service. Therefore, by applying a suitable
theoretical framework, we may be able to understand the factors that leads to perceived
usefulness in using a similar e-government service as well as suggestions toward better
service improvement.
For this paper, the second section focuses on the background and related work on
e-government. This is then followed by the research methodology that was used in this
research. Sections 4 and 5 highlight the overall research ndings by separating the results
into initial and secondary results sections. Finally, the paper concludes with the conclusion
and future work for this research.
2. Background and related works
In e-government, the government uses information technology and the internet to support
government operations, enroll citizens and present government services (Palvia and
Sharma, 2007). According to the World Bank (Kingham, 2003) the denition of
e-government is asfollows:
E-government
adoption in
Malaysia
203

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