Evaluating the Characteristics of E-Government Websites in Developing Countries: Jordan as A Case Study

Abstract

“This research is funded by the Deanship of Research at Zarqa University/Jordan”

Abstract

The intensive use of e-government has created new challenges in government websites. Developing countries cannot escape from these challenges. Such challenges may include the quality of e-government websites services, the usability level, the culture of using internet services, the resistance of using new technology, technical limitations, and the response time. Despite the fact that evaluating e-government websites is not a new phenomenon, limited studies have been conducted in developing countries. Jordan, as one of these developing countries, suffers from the limited studies in this topic. In this paper, the researcher evaluated the official site of the Jordanian e-government. Experimental method has been employed as a methodological approach for data collection and analysis. To evaluate the official site of the Jordanian e-government (OSJEG), a considerable number of factors have been presented including: "quality of e-government websites services" as an dependent variable, the "usability level”, the culture of using internet, the resistance of using new technology, technical limitations and the response time" as independent variables; Such factors have positive and negative effects over OSJEG. In addition, several documents have been analyzed as a secondary data. Finally, according to the results from this research, this paper suggests several recommendations that aimed to improve the quality of OSJEG. However, a considerable number of weaknesses in OSJEG could be taken into consideration.

Keywords: Jordanian e-government, online services, distance services, Information services, electronic government, new usability technology

DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-32-05

Publication date: November 30^th 2019