User experience of e-government: the Nigeria Immigration Service
| Published date | 16 September 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-09-2018-0138 |
| Date | 16 September 2019 |
| Pages | 355-373 |
| Author | Olaseni Muritala Okunola,Jennifer Rowley |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
User experience of e-government:
the Nigeria Immigration Service
Olaseni Muritala Okunola
Department of Languages, Information and Communications,
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK, and
Jennifer Rowley
Department of Information and Communications,
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to identify key considerations influencing the adoption and use of
e-government services by providing insights into users’views of their experience of an e-government service
in a developing country, the website of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS).
Design/methodology/approach –An online questionnaire-based survey was conducted to capture
perceptions of the user experience with the NIS website. Descriptive statistics for each of the factors that
contribute to the user experience are reported and discussed, with reference to open comments and previous
literature. These factors are security and support, trust, ease of use, website quality, content and information,
perceived benefits, convenience and perceived barriers.
Findings –There is strong evidence of concern in relation to the security of financial transactions, the use of
personal data and trustworthiness, which is aggravated by inadequate user support. There is a lack of
consensus regarding ease of use, website quality and content and information. In terms of barriers and
benefits, there was a general agreement that the website offered greater convenience than alternative
channels, but some concerns were identified regarding the reliability of technology, and, for users in Nigeria,
the reliability of the electricity supply.
Originality/value –This paper adds to the very sparse literature on e-government in Nigeria, as well as
extending consideration of the public value approach to e-government in developing countries.
Keywords Nigeria, E-government, User experience, Public value, Citizen satisfaction,
Security and support
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Governments worldwide have introduced e-government services in order to reduce costs
and make their operations more efficient, provide prompt service, improve service quality,
remove barriers to government services, tackle social exclusion and provide local access
points (Praeg and Spath, 2010; Asogwa, 2013; Rana and Dwivedi, 2015; Abu-Shanab, 2017).
Typical applications include information provision, downloading of forms, interaction,
service delivery and e-democracy (Al Ajeeli and Al-Bastaki, 2011; Siddiquee, 2016; Oni et al.,
2016, Sampson et al., 2018).
For developing countries, the implementation of e-government promises a range of
potentialsocial, economic, and politicalbenefits, and can make a significant contributionto the
development of information technology infrastructures, and raising citizen skills in the
implementation and use of information and communication technologies (Dwivedi, 2009;
Lee and Lei, 2007; Yonazi et al., 2010; Amagoh, 2015). However, there is evidence that
developing countries struggle to achieve successful implementation and adoption of
e-government(Reddick, 2010; Hassan et al., 2011; Al-Refaieand Ramadna, 2017). For example,
Heeks (2006) and Gunawong and Gao (2017) suggest that successful implementation and
development of e-government is often hampered by lack of resources and finance, Reddick
(2010) suggests that the problem lies with not achieving aims and objectives, and Lee and
Lei (2007) point to the lack of adequate strategies.More poignantly, Mundy and Musa (2010)
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 37 No. 3, 2019
pp. 355-373
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/LHT-09-2018-0138
Received 1 May 2018
Revised 25 September 2018
30 January 2019
Accepted 6 February 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
355
User
experience of
e-government
and Ciborra (2005) argue that the implementation of e-government services is not well-suited
to developing countries, such as Nigeria, as political, social and cultural changes to re-shape
the trust that citizens are prepared to place in their government are necessary. Finally,
deficiencies in basic technological infrastructure, coupled with a lack of user experience may
affect the success of the implementation of e-government systems in developing countries
(Dimitrova and Chen, 2006; Rokhman, 2011; Waller and Genius, 2015; Carter et al., 2016).
Ultimately,the success of e-government can be judgedby the extent of user adoption and user
satisfaction(Al Athmay et al., 2016), togetherwith e-government’s contribution to p ublic value
(Scott et al., 2016).
This paper reports on a study of the user experience of the Nigeria Immigration Service
(NIS) website. This service has been chosen as the basis for this study because Nigeria is a
large and important African developing country, and as Olasina (2012) suggests “there are
limited academic writings on this subject with reference to Nigeria”and, in particular “there
is no literature on empirical findings on citizens’views, satisfaction and requirements for
better e-government services”. In addition, the NIS e-service has been lauded as a relatively
successful e-government service (Yusuf, 2006; Abdulkareem, 2015).
The aim of this study is, then, to provide insights into users’perceptions of their
experience of the e-government service delivered through the NIS website. More specifically,
the objectives are to:
(1) offer insights into the users’perceptions of the problems associated with each of the
aspects of the user experience;
(2) identify those aspects of the user experience that could be improved; and
(3) make recommendations for service quality improvements, and for further research.
The next section of the paper distils previous research on the evaluation of e-government
services and the citizen/user experience. The methodology section explains the design of the
data collection instrument, and the processes associated with the online survey and data
analysis. The findings and discussion section reports, and discusses, the profile of users, and
descriptive statistics in respect of aspects of the user e-government experience, together with
text responses to the open question. Finally, the conclusions and recommendations section
summarises the contribution of the research and makes recommendations for further research.
Literature review
The need to encourage citizen adoption of e-government technologies has led to an
increasing interest in the evaluation of e-government services, often in terms of citizen or
customer satisfaction and notions of e-government service quality and impact. Halaris et al.
(2007) classify the approaches to measuring the quality of e-government into three
categories concerned, respectively, with: the quality of traditional public service
(e.g. balanced scorecard and six sigma); the quality of e-government services
(e.g. the American Customer Satisfaction that this paper will fill Index (ACSI); and the
quality of e-services (e.g. E-S-QUAL, E-Qual, E-service quality). Halaris et al. (2007) suggest
the following criteria as often being used in the studies that they reviewed: service
reliability, personalisation, information/content, navigation/accessibility, security and
system performance. Similarly, the features that researchers have identified as
contributing to e-service quality are: site features, security, communication, reliability,
customer support, responsiveness, information, accessibility, delivery and personalisation
(Rowley, 2006). Others have used the Technology Adoption Model (TAM) and/or the
Diffusion of Innovation model (DOI) as the basis for their study. For example, Carter and
Belanger (2005) used both TAM and DOI, and found that perceived ease of use,
compatibility, and trustworthiness were important in e-government adoption. Together,
356
LHT
37,3
To continue reading
Request your trial