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Top1. Introduction
The advancement of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has facilitated the modernisation of internet-based services. Public services are one of the sectors that have benefited substantially from these advancements in the realm of information technology. The idea of e-government refers to the use of ICTs to improve the efficiency of governmental services. E-government was founded in the United States of America in 1993 and is concerned with modernising government procedures in order to take use of current information and communication technologies (Verkijika and De Wet, 2018). As of 2014, all 193 United Nations Member States had established national websites, and nearly 50 countries had established online portals, which have more than doubled in number since 2012. When the benefits of e-government are weighed against the disadvantages of the old method of providing government services, this increase in the number of e-government websites is unsurprising. Citizens enjoy 24-hour access to e-government services, which need just an active internet connection. Along with longer service hours, e-government has other advantages that conventional means cannot match, including transparency, more citizen-government interaction, cost savings, improved service quality, and speed (Mustaf, Ibrahim, and Mohammed, 2020).
Electronic governance helps not only citizens, but also a large number of people who live in a nation. We will use the word “client” to refer to all e-government beneficiaries (citizens, foreign employees, expatriates, pilgrims, and tourists, for example). The phrase “e-government” has been used many times in the literature with different degrees of emphasis. They all agree, however, that e-government is the government's use of information technology to carry out its responsibilities and provide public services. According to the United Nations (Thompson, Mullins, and Chongsutakawewong, 2020), e-government encompasses everything from information retrieval to the use of an online service, such as renewing a driver's licence or passport. According to Husin, Loghmani, and Abidin (2017), e-government refers to the process of delivering services and information to consumers, workers, companies, and government agencies via the use of information technology in order to improve efficiency. As a result, for e-government to succeed, consumers must be willing to utilise the service. E-government also refers to the use of new technologies to assist changes in the operation and effectiveness of government, whose operations include the provision of electronic communications to provide information and services to consumers, companies, organisations, and enterprises. Not only that, these interactions enable the placement and receipt of orders and the completion of financial transactions, allowing governments to provide information and services to consumers much more quickly and easily, thus establishing a positive reputation with customers. On the other side, ineffective electronic governance may have a detrimental effect on governments, particularly those in wealthy nations. Thus, governments are obligated to foster consumer confidence, optimise administrative procedures and online services, enhance transparency, and combat corruption.
Numerous academics have done studies on e-government in different Arabian Peninsula nations. The first phase of the Saudi Arabian e-government was established in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and its accomplishments are detailed in (Alghamdi, and Beloff, 2016). Current information on the Saudi e-government may be found at (Almukhlifi, Deng, and Kam, 2019). Since its beginning, researchers in the KSA have examined many elements of e-government. Basahel and Yamin (2017). identified a number of barriers to e-government adoption in the KSA, including a lack of IT infrastructure in the public sector, a lack of public awareness about e-government, a lack of systems to ensure data security and privacy, and a shortage of qualified IT and government service expert personnel. Santa, MacDonald, and Ferrer (2019) highlighted cultural problems as a reason for the delayed adoption of e-government in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in his PhD Thesis titled: Factors Affecting Customers' Adoption of E-government Moderated by Socio-cultural Values in Saudi Arabia. We included a portion of his questionnaire into our analysis of this research. The writers of addressed e-government implementation problems in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Ali et al (2019) stated that the success of e-government projects is contingent on the desire of consumers to utilise these services.