E‐Government Evolution: A Supply Perspective of e‐Government in Malaysia
Kamalia Azma Kamaruddin, Ariza Nordin and Nor Laila Md Noor Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam, Malaysia kamalia @ tmsk. uitm. edu. my ariza @ tmsk. uitm. edu. my norlaila @ tmsk. uitm. edu. my
Abstract: E‐Government has evolved from its initial presence on the Internet to more transactional and integrated applications. A model to reflect growth is an integral part for a successful e‐Government implementation thus it need to be present in order to benchmark its development. Although there have been many initiatives deployed to promote e‐ Government developments all over the world, it is lacking of a model to categorize initiatives based on investment made in the organization. This study attempts to classify e‐Government initiatives by focusing on the investment in the supply‐side perspective. The research use literature analysis method to study existing information system models and adapting it to suit the needs of our context. We propose an e‐Government evolution model in supply perspective which consists of five evolutionary phases:( 1) Infrastructure,( 2) Infostructure,( 3) Transactional,( 4) Informational and( 5) Strategic. Through a case study, we adopted the model to see the classification of different e‐Government initiatives in Malaysia. Each initiative is evaluated using supply lens to understand its position in the overall e‐Government development. We recommend that governmental agencies follow this evolutionary path as they progress from providing infrastructure services to positioning the organization as a pioneer in the field that give innovative services to the citizens and business alike.
Keywords: e‐government evolution model, e‐government investment, it demand and supply, it investment
1. Introduction
Governments in developed and developing countries have implemented electronic government in their effort to promote efficient governance( Weerakkody and Dhillon 2008) to the citizens and business communities alike. Broadly, e‐Government can be defined as“ government’ s use of ICT, particularly, web‐based applications, to enhance the access to and delivery of government information and services to citizens, businesses, employees and other agencies and entities”( Wang and Liao 2008). In the era of information technology especially when the Internet and World Wide Web continues to expand, it is not surprising to see all levels of governmental bodies leveraging on these approach to deliver their services. Evolution model is an important tool to measure the growth of e‐Government initiatives.
There have been many e‐Government evolution models established in the recent years as cited by Ifinedo and Singh( 2011). These stage models developed since the year 2000 until recently, tried to characterize the state of an e‐Government level in a continuous process to determine its maturity level: from developing a static website to integrating government systems behind the web interface( Schelin 2003). However, to the best of our knowledge, none of the models in the context of e‐Government is suitable to classify e‐Government initiatives based on IT investment made in the organization.
IT management consists of two dimensions. The first dimension is the demand side, which is the business customer ' s perspective. A business unit ' s interest in IT is primarily as a support function in the achievement of their goals( Damoulakis 2008). Second is the supply side, which focused on areas like software applications, hardware, infrastructures, tools and staff. These elements ensure that services are delivered and it’ s the IT manager ' s primary areas of focus.
In managing e‐Government developments, challenges exists to the supply‐side because of the size and complexity of governmental structures and the huge amount of information that the organization needs to deal with( Koh et al. 2005). A suitable evolution model that categorizes each e‐Government initiatives based on investment made in the organization is needed so that future developments and enhancement can be planned. By looking at supply perspective, we can strategize IT growth in governmental agencies and improve organization wide return on investment( ROI).
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