E-Goverment in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies.

What is e-government?
Electronic government, generally known as ‘e-government’ is defined as the use of Internet and other digital devices in public sector to deliver services and information.

Exploiting the opportunities of the internet.

Everyone’s Connected, Everything’s Accessible

Until recent years, e-government has been widely adopted in most countries in order for the countries to achieve good governance. The adoption of e-government integrates both the processing and the communication technologies since it integrates people, processes, information, and technology in the service of achieving government objectives. By implementing e-government, it will help to improve the government processes, connect citizens and build interactions with and within the civil society.

The implementation of e-government started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by Malaysian government. There is still lack of study in the area of e-government in Malaysia currently even though it is part of Vision 2020. However, there are some current application of e-government in Malaysia such as e-Filling, renewing road tax and driving license online, and KWSP i-Account.

What is MSC Malaysia?

MSC Malaysia is the gateway to growing profits in Asia's booming information and communications technology (ICT) markets. Modeled after Silicon Valley, it gives us the best of first-world knowledge and infrastructure, at developing-nation costs. From the development of innovative flagship applications to cybercities and cybercentres across Malaysia, MSC Malaysia is continuously pushing the limits of innovation towards achieving its vision.

E-government was one of the Seven Flagship Application introduced by MSC in order to lead the Malaysian towards the objectives of Vision 2020. However, there are seven pilot projects of the Electronic Government Flagship Application :

1. Project Monitoring System (SPP II)
2. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)
3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)
4. Electronic Procurement (EP)
5. Electronic Services (E-services)
6. Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)
7. E-syariah

Project Monitoring System (SPP II)

SPP II as one of the e-government projects will create a mechanism to monitor project implementation throughout various government agencies and statutory bodies. SPP II would also provide a platform to exchange ideas and to demonstrate best practices in information management and communication services.

Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)

HRMIS provide single interface for government employees to perform human resource functions effectively and efficiently in an integrated environment.

Generic Office Environment (GOE)

GOE used to introduce a fully integrated, distributed and scalable office environment that leverages use of multimedia information technology. This enables efficient communication, allowing collaboration across all workers, and ensuring right information reaching the right people in a timely manner.

Electronic Procurement (EP)

EP is to re-engineer, automate, and transform current procurement system. The use of EP will increase transparency, save time and money.

Electronic Services (E-services)

E-services is a pilot project that allows citizens of Malaysia to engage in transactions with government and utilities payments such as telephone and electricity bill, police summons, etc.

Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)

ELX is one stop-centre for labor market information, as supervised by the Ministry of Human Resource (MORH), to enable employers and job seekers to communicate on the same platform.

E-syariah

E-syariah eventually enhance the Islamic Affairs Department’s effectiveness through better monitoring and co-ordination of its agencies and improving the management of its 102 Syariah courts.

There are some problems faced in e-government implementation:

1) Language barrier is one of problems faced by e-government. Most of the government websites are using Bahasa Malaysia so this may have difficulties for some citizens who do not know Bahasa Malaysia.

2) Lack of incentives to apply e-government makes the process of e-government implementation just a formal procedure that makes no impact on existing work scheme.

3) Malaysians are not adopting to use electronic transaction such as online banking and buying things through Internet. This is still new to some of the citizens.

4) Some of Malaysians are not confidence with the security of e-government websites because there are many frauds issues arise.

Citizen’s adoption strategies

The government should increase the awareness from citizens in the existing of their services provided in e-government. For example, do some advertisement through newspaper, magazine, radio, or billboards in order to increase their awareness. The government can encourage citizens to increase the usage of e-government by giving some allowances.

E-government adoption requires that citizens show higher levels of satisfaction and security with the online service provided by the government. A higher level of customer satisfaction will increase the rate of e-government adoption because the citizens are comfortable of the protected privacy and confidentiality of the user's information. Besides, they will feel more confident with the e-government system.

The service quality of e-government also should be competitive with the other developed country in terms of speed, problem serving approach, and ease of use of the website. This is crucial as it provides and encourages long-term users to use the website frequently and cut-off paper work when the payment process can be made through online.