Mobile Government Adoption, Acceptance, Usage and Diffusion in The Saudi Arabian Context
The use of mobile devices is increasing in Saudi Arabia and the government is taking advantage of this to install m-government applications to alert people about the benefits of implementing e-government. By interviewing IT professionals in government institutions, Abanumy and Mayhew (2005) found that the application of m-government in Saudi Arabia is at a lower stage and very few m-government applications have been implemented. Government institutions are only using SMS to alert people due to their low costs (Abanumy & Mayhew, 2005). M-government is a new technology and by discussing the role of m-government applications, it contributes a lot to the issue of e-government applications, the field of e-government and m-government; this research has enabled many m-government applications to be implemented in e-government systems.
By conducting a quantitative research through interviewing 30 participants from organizations in all five regions in Saudi Arabia to investigate the level of e-readiness in Saudi organizations, Al-Solbi and Mayhew (2005) found that the country is not ready for ICT infrastructure. This is attributed to the lack of ICT Code of Practice in the public sector and the dependence on US Code of Practice by the private sector. In addition, there was no national ICT strategic plan that was in place. The paper has highly contributed to the e-readiness of the country’s public and private organizations.
Security of mobile communication devices is a very important factor that determines the adoption of m-government in Saudi Arabia. Using questionnaires distributed to 196 participants to determine the perception of users to adoption of m-government, Alhussain and Drew (2010) found that users do not fully trust the current authentication techniques employed by m-government applications and suggest that an advanced authentication technique such as biometric technology should be implemented in m-government applications. The paper has greatly contributed to the enhancement of security of m-government applications thereby gaining trust of users.
Using grounded theory methodology, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, Alhussain, Drew & Von Hellens (2010) found that successful implementation of biometric technology in m-government in Saudi Arabia is influenced by the acceptance of the technology by users. Acceptance by users would provide many advantages including ease of use, compatibility, trust, trialability, privacy and observability. The use of the grounded theory was important as it enabled the researchers to discover various aspects of the topic since very little have been done concerning it.
The current method of securing m-government applications is through the use of Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) containing 4 to 8 digits which are application to both the mobile device and Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). However, by using grounded theory, Alhussain & Drew (2012) found that PIN does not provide high security as it is vulnerable to guessing. They proposed the use of biometric authentication method to provide high security services to citizens. The paper has contributed a lot to the implementation of biometric technology not only in m-government, but also in various sectors.
The high growth in Mobile usage in Saudi Arabia has made the government to implement m-government that provides services to citizens whenever they are in their mobile devices. M-government in Saudi Arabia is currently used to provide government-to-government (G2G) services, government-to-consumer (G2C) services and government-to-business (G2B) services (Alsenaidy & Ahmad, 2012). The ministry of health also provides mobile services to update citizens on the important updates on health, medicine and diseases (Alsenaidy & Ahmad, 2012). The study of the current state of m-government in Saudi Arabia enhances improvements and implementation.
References List
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Al-Solbi, A., & Mayhew, P. J 2005, “Measuring e-readiness assessment in Saudi organizations preliminary results from a survey study,” From E-government to M-government, Mobile Government Consortium International LLC, Brighton, UK, 467-475.
Abanumy, A., & Mayhew, P 2005, “M-government implications for e-government in developing countries: The case of Saudi Arabia,” EURO mGOV 2005, 1-6.
Alhussain, T., & Drew, S 2012, Developing a theoretical framework for the adoption of biometrics in m-government applications using grounded theory.
Alhussain, T. O. M., & Drew, S 2010, “Towards Secure M-Government Applications: A survey study in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” In International Conference on Intelligent Network and Computing (ICINC 2010). IEEE.
Alhussain, T. O. M., Drew, S., & Von Hellens, L. A 2010, “Qualitative study on implementing biometric technology in m-government security: A grounded theory approach,” In 5th International Conference on Qualitative Research in IT & IT in Qualitative Research (QualIT2010), QUT, Griffith University and ANU.
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Alsenaidy, A., & Ahmad, T 2012, A review of current state m-government in Saudi Arabia, Department of Biochemistry, King Saudi University.
