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M-government: Opportunities and Challenges to Deliver Mobile Government Services in Developing Countries

Mobile Government (m-Government) is the use of mobile technologies within the government administration to deliver public services to citizens and firms. It is quickly emerging as the new frontier of service delivery, and transforming government by making public services more accessible to citizens. Governments in developing countries are increasingly making efforts to provide more access to information and services for citizens, businesses, and civil servants through wireless devices. However, providing strategically high impact m-services is beset with numerous challenges- complexity of different mobile technologies, creating secured networks to deliver reliable service, and identifying the types of services that can be easily provided on mobile devices. The scope of this study, therefore, is to identify and discuss some of the challenges as well as the opportunities for improving government performance. The objectives of this paper are, to discuss the main challenges and opportunities of m-government and to identify m-services that m-Government initiatives present for developing countries.

User acceptance of Internet banking in Indonesia: Initial trust formation

Most research on Internet banking adoption has focused on a limited set of determinants that influence users’ initial trust. This study takes the uncommon approach of separating the constructs of trust, perceived security, and perceived privacy to reveal the impact that each of these distinct factors has on initial trust formation. A large-scale survey of prospective Internet banking service customers in Indonesia was conducted and the results analyzed using a structural equation modeling approach. Perceived security, perceived privacy, relative benefits, company reputation, website usability, and government support are all factors that influence consumers’ initial trust of Internet banking. Banking firms interested in the expansion of online financial services in developing countries should enhance existing strategies or develop new approaches that account for these factors. Perceived privacy and government support had no impact on the intention to use Internet banking services in Indonesia.

User acceptance of media tablets

We propose a theoretical framework for adopting a media tablet from the perspective of perceived value.An innovative design affects social image, and functionality and content have a positive impact on both perceived usefulness and enjoyment.Brand name positively affects both perceived usefulness and social image.Smartphone experience and personal innovativeness have a significant moderating effect on perceived value. Media tablets have been one of the most innovative and popular mobile devices with the rapid development of mobile computing technology. The purpose of this study is to offer a clear understanding of the overall adoption processes by starting from the characteristics of a media tablet to adoption intention via perceived value. This study investigates the relationships between the value of media tablet (e.g., usefulness, enjoyment, social image, and risk) and the product characteristics (e.g., design, functionality, contents, brand, and price). Perceived benefits including perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and social image seem to have a greater impact than the level of perceived sacrifice on perceived value. Perceived usefulness is the strongest factor determining adoption intention through perceived value. An innovative design affects social image, and brand name positively affects both perceived usefulness and social image. Functionality and content have a positive influence on both perceived usefulness and enjoyment. Price positively affects perceived risk. This research also finds that smartphone experience moderates the effect of perceived usefulness on perceived value, and personal innovativeness offsets the negative effect of perceived risk on perceived value as a moderator. These findings contribute a number of implications for academia and practitioners.

User acceptance of smart home services: an extension of the theory of planned behavior

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive research model that can explain potential customers’ behavioral intentions to adopt and use smart home services.,This study proposes and validates a new theoretical model that extends the theory of planned behavior. Partial least squares analysis is employed to test the research model and corresponding hypotheses on data collected from 216 survey samples.,Mobility, security/privacy risk, and trust in the service provider are important factors affecting the adoption of smart home services.,To increase potential users’ adoption rate, service providers should focus on developing mobility-related services that enable people to access smart home services while on the move using mobile devices via control and monitoring functions.,This study is the first empirical attempt to examine user acceptance of smart home services, as most of the prior literature has concerned technical features.

Understanding users’ continuance intention toward smartphone augmented reality applications

In spite of high expectations for augmented reality (AR) technology, many smartphone AR applications have failed and terminated their services in Korea because of low usage rates. As failures of smartphone AR applications have increased, investigating factors that influence users’ continuance intention to use the AR applications become an important topic. This study develops a theoretical model that explains continuance intention of users based on AR and motivation theories, and empirically examines the influencing factors with collected data from smartphone AR application users. The results showed that information quality was the most influencing factor for AR continuance intention among AR factors, while perceived enjoyment was not a significant antecedent. The implications of this study provide additional insights for smartphone AR researchers and developers.

A Comparative Analysis of Open Source Software Usage in Germany, Brazil, and India

This paper reviews the recent activities of Open Source Software (OSS) adoptions by governments, education sectors, and businesses in Germany, Brazil, and India. It looks at their motivation and focuses on the selected developments of OSS. Typical applications will be discussed as well as consequences from using OSS.

Compensation paradox: the influence of monetary rewards on user behaviour

Many e-commerce companies collect users’ personal data for marketing purposes despite privacy concerns. Information-collecting companies often offer a monetary reward to users to alleviate privacy concerns and ease the collection of personal information. This study focused on the negative effects of monetary rewards on both information privacy concerns (IPC) and information disclosure. A survey approach was used to collect data and 370 final responses were analysed using a two-way analysis of variance and a binomial logistic regression model. The results show that monetary rewards increase IPC when an information-collecting company requires sensitive information. Additional results indicate that building trust is a more effective way of collecting personal data. This study identifies how organisations can best execute information-collection activities and contributes additional insights for academia and practitioners.

Factors Affecting Internet Banking Success: A Comparative Investigation between Indonesia and South Korea

Internet banking is a prominent example of Internet-based applications. Previous research has found that satisfaction, trust, commitment, and loyalty are important factors for Internet banking success. Resistance to adopt Internet banking is often attributed to the role of trust, security, and privacy in e-commerce systems. This study proposes a framework to examine behaviors toward Internet banking services in Indonesia and South Korea. A research model was empirically tested with data captured in a large-scale study. The results show that Indonesians’ use of Internet banking is strongly influenced by perceived security, while Koreans use of Internet banking is strongly influenced by privacy concerns. Trust and user satisfaction have a greater influence on loyalty for Indonesians while commitment has a greater influence on loyalty for Koreans. The study develops related conclusions including a discussion of the research implications.

E-government service use intentions in Afghanistan: technology adoption and the digital divide in a war-torn country

In this article, we developed and tested an integrated model to predict intention to use e-government services by combining the concepts of technology adoption, the digital divide, and conflict literature through surveys of 360 citizens of Afghanistan. Using a partial least squares approach, we found that components of the access divide and the social divide have significant effects on intentions to use e-government services, and that the perceived intensity of civil conflict and perceived behavioral conflict moderate certain predictors of intention to use e-government services. Implications for e-government service adoption and delivery in digitally divided conflict zones in the contexts of research, policy and practice are also discussed.

End-to-end reliability of service oriented applications

As organizations move towards adopting a service oriented architecture that permits the coexistence of multiple technology environments, an increasing number of applications will be developed through the assembly of existing software components with standard web service interfaces. These components with web service interfaces may be available in-house, or may be supplied or hosted by external vendors. The use of multiple services, possibly utilizing different technologies, providers, locations, and sources, has implications for the end-to-end reliability of these applications to support a business process. Selecting the best service for individual tasks in a business process does not guarantee the most effective overall solution, particularly if criteria other than functional characteristics are employed. This paper examines reliability issues associated with applications developed within service oriented architecture. It develops a measure for deriving end-to-end application reliability, and develops a model to help select appropriate services for tasks in the business process which accommodate the redundant and overlapping functionality of available services and planned redundancy in task support to satisfy the reliability requirement of the resulting application. A genetic algorithm approach is adopted to select promising services to assemble the application using end-to-end reliability as the criterion of interest. An application to a real-world business process illustrates the effectiveness of the approach.