Abdul Rahman Ahlan

The Influence of Organizational Factors on Information Systems Success in E-Government Agencies in Malaysia

Information system success continues to be a subject of interest among IS researchers. The literature nevertheless offers limited understanding in regard to organizational factors influencing IS success particularly in public sector organizations. Using perceptual measures, this study aims to investigate the influence of organizational factors on IS success in selected public sector agencies in Malaysia. Data was gathered from 201 users from four central agencies located at the central administration complex in Putrajaya. Based on related studies in the literature, six organizational factors and four IS success dimensions were used in designing the framework for this study. The framework is used to investigate the relationship between the identified organizational factors and IS success dimensions within the scope of the selected e‐government agencies. The organizational factors are top management support, decision‐making structure, management style, managerial IT knowledge, goal alignment, and resources allocation, whereas the IS success dimensions include systems quality, information quality, perceived usefulness, and user satisfaction. The study found that all the organizational factors are significantly correlated with the four IS success dimensions under investigation. Further analyses reveal that goal alignment is the highest predictor of IS success, followed by management style and centralization of decision‐making structure. Least expected was the top management support factor which appear to be the weakest predictor of IS success and its influence on IS success is insignificant. The study concludes that the findings are generally consistent with previous studies. On a specific note related to goal alignment, the public sector agencies can be seen experiencing a similar impact to that of their private counterparts in terms of IS strategy alignment, though they still generally subscribe to the traditional and centralized decision‐making structure.

E‐government application: an integrated model on G2C adoption of online tax

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing citizens’ intention to use e‐filing in the Malaysian context.Design/methodology/approach – The study used quantitative approach methodology. In total, 500 self‐administered questionnaires were distributed and 411 were found usable for data analysis; 14 hypotheses were formulated and tested.Findings – Perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, trust of the government, image, compatibility and service quality are found to be significant predictors of citizens’ intention to use e‐filing.Originality/value – An integrated research model of online tax adoption was developed by integrating the technology acceptance model (TAM), diffusion of innovation (DOI), perceived characteristics of innovating (PCI), web trust and perceived risk, web service quality, and political self‐efficacy dimensions.

Examining Information Disclosure Behavior on Social Network Sites Using Protection Motivation Theory, Trust and Risk

This paper reports on an empirical study that investigates the information disclosure behavior on Social Network Sites (SNS) focusing on undergraduate University students as our population. Although much have been reported on the issue of information privacy or privacy leakage on SNS, very few have employed the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) as a framework to understand SNS user’s behavior related to information disclosure. In this study, the PMT incorporated with trust and risk factor, has revealed that trust on SNS and perceived benefits influenced information disclosure behaviour. Our findings showed that all PMT constructs are significantly related to privacy concern. However, privacy concern and perceived risk were found not related to information disclosure behaviour. Using self-administered questionnaire, 486 undergraduate students from five different universities in Malaysia were involved in this study.

Information security awareness in university: Maintaining learnability, performance and adaptability through roles of responsibility

As the 21st century approached, the current trend of technology product besides deliver the benefit on availability and accessibility on information, problem emerged regard information security. In order to analyze on how technology introduces new risks, it is necessary to discuss the technology lifecycle. Consider for instance the life cycle of technology as the diffusion of an innovation. Since technological innovations or IT solutions are being adopted to support business processes, the need to protect those IT solutions arises with its adoption. Accordingly, two important factors need much consideration in raising awareness are how organization influences significantly of end users attitude and how the organization has the regular assessment or evaluation to measure the effectiveness of IS awareness policy inside the organization.

Validation of Information System Project Success Model: A Focus Group Study

This article illustrates how influential arguments were used to validate an information system (IS) project success model using the inductive-qualitative method rather than continual hypothesis testing. The purpose of the study was to explore the validity and feasibility of the model using a focus group study (FGS) to respond that many IS scholars were under more and more pressure in their research model validations. Most of them claimed that the quantitative validation was only the method to validate their models. Although they may have performed the qualitative validation, only a few of them realized that they have applied this method. This article will be valuable, especially to prove, describe, and illuminate the context and condition where the model validation had been performed qualitatively before the scholar carried out quantitatively the validation. The results represent the four model validation points regarding the modeling process, methodological aspect, and resource availability of the research and its implementation recommendations. A good reference point for IS scholars whose goal to validate their model feasibilities, especially using the qualitative validation method.

IT governance in a Malaysian public institute of higher learning and intelligent decision making support system solution

IT governance in public universities is yet to be fully appreciated. This is because IT governance is just evolving as a new paradigm to take care of the stakeholders’ expectations in leveraging IT with business goals. This study explores issues of IT governance and the use of IDMSS in a public university in Malaysia. The interviews and documents were analysed to generate themes. The findings show the need for effective IT governance in the university. This will enable optimal usage of IT resources, which are expected to have an impact on the university’s performance. Moreover, COBIT framework is presented to provide the benchmark of international standards and practices that the university can adopt in the future. Finally, two IDMSS methods are presented for application in this study. This empirical study on IT governance in the context of a public Institute of Higher learning in Malaysia attempts to document the role of IT and the evolution of its practices in the context of a university.

Conceptual architecture design and configuration of thin client system for schools in Malaysia: A pilot project

Thin client systems have advanced recently with new innovative design extensions such as virtualisation and cloud computing. Client-server architecture is the basis for thin client system to connect remote multi-workstations to administrative servers located in headquarters or data center. This paper first presents a literature review on thin client concept and virtualization. In the next section, we describe the Wyse Technology and Linux thin client for windows-based and open source solution respectively. We then proceed with description of proposed conceptual architecture design and implementation for primary and secondary schools in Malaysia taking into account International Telecommunication Union and other International standards or benchmarks for high quality of service (QoS) delivery. Finally, our recommendation is that each system design and implementation is unique and thus requires different sets of decision-making criteria before designing an architecture. Networked-schools across a country like Malaysia with heavy users requirements pose high specification in architecture and system design planning to IT divisions.

Measurement of the information system project success of the higher education institutions in Indonesia: a pilot study

This paper presents a pilot study to validate quantitatively an information system IS project success model. In terms of its continual research, the model was evaluated qualitatively using focus group study FGS conducted earlier in the research. This study was also aimed to explain an IS project success performance and its factors that affect the project implementation in the sampled institution. Despite that the findings and its recommendations can only be considered in the context of the pilot study, this research had highlighted the complementary, completeness, and comprehensiveness of the model validation through mixed-methods approach. Such findings had become the main contribution of this study, among others, that is to fill the gap in the literature of the lack of comprehensive detail of model validation through mixed-methods.

Role of governance, ethics and integrity in managing information technology resources: Muslim practitioner's view

No doubt there is established best practices and frameworks guiding the proper usage of Information Technology (IT) resources in achieving optimality. However, what is obtainable today in the Muslims world where ethics and integrity are essential fundamentals of faith gives more than meet the eyes. This study explored the ITG research, issue of ethics and learning from interview sessions held with a Muslim IT Practitioner practicing in an educational environment it viewed the current state of the Muslims in the optimal use of the IT resources. It sees IT Governance (ITG) as control exercised by the board of directors and managements in the formulation of right decisions. It was observed that while these frameworks have nothing alien to Islam, the Muslims who are supposed to be the harbingers of its ideals are rarely seen as been up and doing. The Ummah needs to look inward to internalise the best practices enabled in IT putting it to work. Thus, they will be optimal in their ways and end up doing acts of worship in accordance with the letter and spirit of their faith.

Modeling the impact of information technology governance effectiveness using partial least square

The practice of information technology (IT) governance entails activities that ensures stakeholder needs are evaluated to determine balanced, agreed upon enterprise objectives to be achieved; setting direction through IT-related prioritisation and decision making, and monitoring performance and compliance against agreed upon direction and objectives. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of IT governance effectiveness in private sector organizations in a developing country such as Malaysia. Based on extant literature review, a research model was developed for analyzing the relationship between the practices for effective IT governance in this environment and their effect on organizational performance. A survey research method was applied for data collection and sample data from Malaysian private sector organizations (this environment) obtained. Subsequently, structural equation modeling technique, namely partial least squares, was applied to test statistically the correlated effects. The results indicate significant small to strong positive correlated effects on IT governance effectiveness. Finally, a model for effective IT governance in this environment was proposed. The findings imply that decision makers can optimize IT-related plans and use of scarce resources by concentrating on the factors that have a significant effect on organizational performance that could lead to an improvement of service delivery.