Trust Dimensions and the Adoption of E-Government in Jordan

2. Background Of E-Government

E-government is a discipline that comes from many areas of research like information technology, political science, public and business administration. Such issue influenced the definition of e-government, where many definitions where proposed based on the view of the research domains they belong to. The literature indicates some similarities and differences between e-government and e-commerce field. Carter and Belanger (2004) argue that both e-government and e-commerce depend on the Internet technology in delivering their services. Differences between e-government and e-commerce are the following: citizens interact with government in a much richer set of different contexts and life episodes than with a single e-commerce vendor. Second, citizens have no choice to choose between service providers while e-commerce customers have many services providers. Third, citizens have stronger trust in e-government and in the technology used than in e-commerce (Riedl, 2011).

Evans and Yen (2006, p. 209) defined the e-government as “e-government means the communication between the government and its citizens via computers and a web-enabled presence. The advantages in timeliness, responsiveness, and cost containment are outstanding”.