Motive is an important underlying reason an organization engages in a particular behavior, which includes initiating a particular information systems adoption. Adoption motives, however, are situational, urging motivational studies to be contingent on the context. The purposes of this paper are therefore twofold: (1) reflecting on the case of Indonesian e-voting initiative, to examine the local government‘s motives behind e-government adoption; (2) to identify emerging themes that might have influenced the process of e-voting adoption in several Indonesian villages. Qualitative data were collected from five government leaders at both municipal and village levels in a municipality that have previously conducted village e-voting elections. This study found that performance-related rationalities, i.e. cost-savings, reducing service delivery-time, are the main drives for e-voting adoption in this case. Although instances of motives belonging to technological and strategic clusters have also been recorded, none of the leaders responded to operation-related motives. This might be due to the simplistic interpretation of e-voting as merely a replacement for paper-ballots, while its broader implication to democratic values and election best practices have been largely ignored. Moreover, it was evident from the study that the decision to adopt voting technology in this case has been significantly influenced by political interests, where strong cases of leadership further accelerated the adoption process. The strong determination exhibited by higher level leaders has put significant pressures on the lower level authorities to implement e-voting, which might have conflicted with their own organizational strategy, socio-cultural norms, and citizen preparedness. This study is important to identify context-based rationales behind e-voting initiatives in Indonesia and the results are relevant to assist Indonesian government in the development of other e-government strategy in the future. This paper further emphasizes for a broader strategy which takes account of the risks of impairing democratic values and generating conflicts during electoral processes.

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Beyond Organizational Motives of e-Government Adoption: The Case of e-Voting Initiative in Indonesian Villages

The chief information officer (CIO) is pivotal in enabling public sector organizations of developing countries to gain the full potential of information and communication technologies. Extant literature studied important aspects related to CIOs, such as competencies, roles, and relationship with CEO, yet it is fragmented and insufficiently comprehensive to offer an effective pathway or model to guide the transition to the CIO role. Studies on how public organizations in developing countries can create a transition to accommodate CIOs in their existing structures are necessary. This research, based on secondary data, identifies key issues that delineate the transition to CIO role anchored in institutional theory and the context of developing countries, including perceived organizational readiness, human capacity, strategic orientation, and organizational culture. Their interrelationships with proper institutional interventions and adaptation to contextual characteristics establish the foundation for a process map for the transition to the CIO role.

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Issues in the Transition to CIO Role in the Public Sector of Developing Countries

This paper presents the first phase of a study on using course design, including current eLearning and social trends, to overcome challenges in eLearning within developing countries, particularly for vocational/non-mainstream training. The paper outlines the research and development of an ICT artefact using the Action Design Research method. The artefact will later be deployed and evaluated. The paper discusses the previous research that has categorised challenges in eLearning in developing countries and explores how these can be overcome through course and element design. Course design includes training development, platform selection and platform hosting, particularly in the context of developing countries. Element design looks at the creation of content that should be available, practical and viable to both the user and developer through the exploitation of current eLearning and social trends. The paper concludes with the concept of the ICT artefact that has been designed for phase two of the study.

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Designing an ELearning Portal for Developing Countries: An Action Design Approach

The paper aims to explore local contextual influences on the adoption of a virtual learning environment in a regional public university in the Philippines. Through an interpretive case study, this paper examines the perspective of teachers, who optionally adopted a VLE and used the concept of ‘bayanihan’ to build a small and informal network of support. The examination of the ‘bayanihan’ culture presents an understanding of the role of communal support focused on the new and potential adopters of the VLE. The broader implication revealed in this paper is that there are local contextual characteristics that are crucial and can play an important role in the adoption process. In the context of this research, ‘bayanihan’ has been found to be an important socio-cultural characteristics that facilitated the adoption of the VLE.

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The Significance of Bayanihan Culture on Technology Adoption: A Case of Virtual Learning Environment Adoption in a Regional Public University in the Philippines

Information systems have the potential to improve societal conditions in developing countries, and yet design theory to inform interventions to encourage uptake and use of these systems is sparse. This paper reports on an action design research project that addressed the problem of limited adoption of e-Government in Bangladesh. Inadequate knowledge of the nature of e-Government systems had been identified as an underlying cause of many other problems in this ‘wicked’ problem context. The project aimed to reduce knowledge deficiencies among key decision makers through activities that included the delivery of a custom-made training program and a handbook targeted at senior government officers. The project had modest resources and yet yielded significant outcomes. Critical reflection established a number of design principles for a ‘sweet spot change strategy’ for interventions of this type, with the most important principle being to first identify a ‘sweet spot’, a point of maximum leverage, and then to act on it.

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A ‘sweet spot’ change strategy for a least developed country: leveraging e-Government in Bangladesh

This paper describes a successful intervention to facilitate the adoption of e-government in a least developed country. The action design research project adopted an unusual approach to facilitating e-government based on earlier grounded research that identified particular underlying inhibitors to adoption. In this case, the need to increase the knowledge of the Bangladeshi public servants to the potential and approaches of e-government was a higher priority than attempting any specific e-government project implementation. A formal education program has been established that is available to all Bangladeshi public servants through institutional training. The project’s approach and the lessons learned in its delivery provide a useful framework for other e-government interventions in least developed countries.

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Curriculum Design and Delivery for E-Government Knowledge Transfer in a Cross Cultural Environment: The Bangladesh Experience

E-learning projects in developing countries suffer enormous challenges because of various factors. Particularly, technologies that are designed and developed outside of a developing country context are causing significant problems when implemented in developing countries. So far e-learning studies in developing countries have examined utilization, acceptance, adoption, success and failure using the following factors: culture, human behaviour towards technology, and organizational influences. This paper reviews different theoretical perspectives used so far and determines that they are not capturing the complexity of the environment of elearning implementations in developing countries. In particular, the inextricable entanglement of people, technology and the environment is under-appreciated. Furthermore, the complex design implications of that entanglement are not well managed. This paper explores the potentiality of ‘sociomateriality’ as a new lens to examine the uptake and design of the virtual learning environment in a developing country context. The framework proposed uses the concept of entanglement for examining technology uptake and the concept of sociomaterial imbrication to investigate the design considerations of the virtual learning environment. The proposed framework will be trialled in a forthcoming research project investigating virtual learning environment implementations in state-owned higher education institutions in a developing country.

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Introducing a sociomaterial perspective to investigate e-learning for higher educational institutions in developing countries

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world over the past 10 years. Researchers have been using several data mining techniques to help health care professionals in the diagnosis of heart disease. K-Nearest-Neighbour (KNN) is one of the successful data mining techniques used in classification problems. However, it is less used in the diagnosis of heart disease patients. Recently, researchers are showing that combining different classifiers through voting is outperforming other single classifiers. This paper investigates applying KNN to help healthcare professionals in the diagnosis of heart disease. It also investigates if integrating voting with KNN can enhance its accuracy in the diagnosis of heart disease patients. The results show that applying KNN could achieve higher accuracy than neural network ensemble in the diagnosis of heart disease patients. The results also show that applying voting could not enhance the KNN accuracy in the diagnosis of heart disease.

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Applying K-Nearest Neighbour in Diagnosing Heart Disease Patients

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world over the past 10 years. Researchers have been using several data mining techniques to help health care professionals in the diagnosis of heart disease. Naïve Bayes is one of the data mining techniques used in the diagnosis of heart disease showing considerable success. K-means clustering is one of the most popular clustering techniques; however initial centroid selection strongly affects its results. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of an unsupervised learning technique which is k-means clustering in improving supervised learning technique which is naïve bayes. It investigates integrating K-means clustering with Naïve Bayes in the diagnosis of heart disease patients. It also investigates different methods of initial centroid selection of the K-means clustering such as range, inlier, outlier, random attribute values, and random row methods in the diagnosis of heart disease patients. The results show that integrating k-means clustering with naïve bayes with different initial centroid selection could enhance the naïve bayes accuracy in diagnosing heart disease patients. It also showed that the two clusters random row initial centroid selection method could achieve higher accuracy than other initial centroid selection methods in the diagnosis of heart disease patients showing accuracy of 84.5%

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Integrating Naive Bayes and K-Means Clustering with Different Initial Centroid Selection Methods in the Diagnosis of Heart Disease Patients

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world over the past 10 years. Researchers have been using several data mining techniques to help health care professionals in the diagnosis of heart disease. Decision Tree is one of the successful data mining techniques used. However, most research has applied J4.8 Decision Tree, based on Gain Ratio and binary discretization. Gini Index and Information Gain are two other successful types of Decision Trees that are less used in the diagnosis of heart disease. Also other discretization techniques, voting method, and reduced error pruning are known to produce more accurate Decision Trees. This research investigates applying a range of techniques to different types of Decision Trees seeking better performance in heart disease diagnosis. A widely used benchmark data set is used in this research. To evaluate the performance of the alternative Decision Trees the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy are calculated. The research proposes a model that outperforms J4.8 Decision Tree and Bagging algorithm in the diagnosis of heart disease patients.

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Using data mining techniques in heart disease diagnosis and treatment

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world over the past 10 years. Researchers have been using several data mining techniques to help health care professionals in the diagnosis of heart disease. Decision Tree is one of the successful data mining techniques used. However, most research has applied J4.8 Decision Tree, based on Gain Ratio and binary discretization. Gini Index and Information Gain are two other successful types of Decision Trees that are less used in the diagnosis of heart disease. Also other discretization techniques, voting method, and reduced error pruning are known to produce more accurate Decision Trees. This research investigates applying a range of techniques to different types of Decision Trees seeking better performance in heart disease diagnosis. A widely used benchmark data set is used in this research. To evaluate the performance of the alternative Decision Trees the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy are calculated. The research proposes a model that outperforms J4.8 Decision Tree and Bagging algorithm in the diagnosis of heart disease patients.

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Using decision tree for diagnosing heart disease patients

This study empirically examines the general propositions of media richness theory using newer and increasing popular messaging media, Instant Messaging (IM) and Short Messaging Service (SMS), in two distinct cultural contexts, Australia and China. The overall results of this study support some aspects of media richness theory. Media richness is rated in decreasing order of face-to-face, telephone, IM, email and SMS. When task equivocality increases, richer media (face-to-face and telephone) are perceived to be more effective, while email becomes more popular when task equivocality decreases. Although IM is perceived to be richer than email, it is not perceived to be the most popular medium for any situation. Perception of SMS is marginally consistent with what media richness theory predicted. Data also demonstrate cultural differences in media perception of and preference for new media. Specifically, Australian students have higher preference for email than their Chinese counterparts and Australian students also perceive IM and SMS as leaner in terms of media richness and have less preference for these media than their Chinese counterparts. Australian students prefer email in a manner similar to the telephone, while Chinese students perceive messaging media significantly different from traditional media.

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Group Norms, Media Preferences, and Group Meeting Success: A Longitudinal Study

Despite the potential for information systems to improve societal conditions in developing countries, a lack of cumulative knowledge building to inform interventions hampers progress. This paper reports an integrated action research–design science project that addressed the problem of limited adoption of e-government in Bangladesh and contributes to design theory. Inadequate knowledge of the nature of e-government systems was identified as an underlying cause of many other problems. Activities included the delivery of a training program and a handbook targeted at senior government officers. The project had relatively modest resources and yet yielded positive outcomes. Critical reflection has established a number of design principles for an intervention of this type, with the most important principle being to first identify a “sweet spot”, a point of maximum leverage, and then work on it.

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Designing for a ‘Sweet Spot’ in an Intervention in a Least Developed Country: The Case of e-Government in Bangladesh

As virtual teams become more and more important in organizations, understanding how to improve virtual team relational development and meeting outcomes is vital to project success. The objective of this study was to investigate how the dialogue technique that facilitated building of shared understanding in virtual teams can be used to enhance virtual team relational development and decision outcomes in a Chinese cultural context. The results from an experiment demonstrate that the adopted dialogue technique can indeed help team members develop their team relations and enhance their perceived team meeting outcomes. Video-conferencing virtual teams with shared mental models may be engaged as effectively as traditional face-to-face teams. Moreover, this study reveals that the dialogue technique can enhance face-to-face team outcomes. Therefore, the findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications for helping teams develop shared understanding of effective communication and enhance decision-making outcomes in the Chinese cultural context.

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Improving the effectiveness of virtual teams: A comparison of video-conferencing and face-to-face communication in China

The field of e-government has been so named for about the last fifteen years, although some defini-tions of e-government extend its heritage back to the 1970s. But where is the field up to? What issues are being explored? What has been established as a central body of knowledge in this field? This paper reviews the re-views of e-government that have been published thus far. The paper discovers that the field is still young enough that the reviews do not adopt consistent approaches, do not draw from an agreed resource of publications, and investigate the field from different perspectives. Consequently, little can be said definitively about where e-government is. Furthermore, this review identifies that crucial sources of e-government ideas and direction are not considered at all. This is particularly problematic because the resources not considered—government reports and strategies and publications of international consulting firms—are frequently the only resources applied by practitioners in the e-government field.

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A review of reviews of e-government: What are we not doing?

This paper outlines an applied research project which was successfully conducted in Bangladesh. Prior research has shown that attitudes and a lack of knowledge have been the major stumbling blocks preventing ICT adoption in Bangladesh’s public sector. Accordingly, this one year project under the auspices of the Australian Government’s Public Sector Linkages Program (PSLP) addressed two critical issues; filling the ‘knowledge gap’ on e-gov processes and empowering government officials and decision makers to prepare them for successful implementation of eGovernance. In addition to preparing a strategy based on the prior research, the project aimed to build the capacity of government officials through a comprehensive but concise training program. The training was supported by a handbook specially prepared to suit the context that is likely to serve as a constant companion and guide for day-to-day IT management for government officials.

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eGovernment capacity building through knowledge transfer and best practice development in Bangladesh

This book was published in Bangladesh as part of A/Prof Ahmed Imran’s PhD project. Few copies are known to still exist.

This textbook was published in Bangladesh as part of A/Prof Ahmed Imran’s PhD project. It was reprinted once or twice by special order.

This chapter was published in the textbook above as part of A/Prof Ahmed Imran’s PhD project.

The current trend of increasing instant messaging (IM) use and its potential growth motivate this study. It offers a novel exploration of users’ preferences for IM in the context of the use of other traditional and new communication media: face-to-face, telephone, email, and short messaging service (SMS) in two distinct cultures: Australia and China. It examines the impact of demographics, media experience, media richness perception, and national culture on media preferences. Our results, based on a student survey conducted in the two countries, show that women prefer IM for communication activities that require more attention and personal presence and prefer email for communication activities that require less personal presence. Communication technology experience may predict the adoption of new technology, such as IM and SMS, but has no effect on media that are already widely adopted, such as email. Email was clustered with face-to-face and telephone as the most preferred media for any communication activity, while IM and SMS clustered together and were the least preferred media for communication. After controlling for demographics and media experience, we found significant cultural differences in IM, telephone, and email preferences. Chinese preferred to use IM and telephone, while Australians preferred to use email. The cultural impact on technology use is persistent.

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An Exploratory Investigation into Instant Messaging Preferences in Two Distinct Cultures

Is IT a Profession?

This paper describes a key strategy formulated for a least developed country, Bangladesh, as a part of an e-gov capacity building project under the auspices of the Australian Government’s Public Sector Linkages Program (PSLP). The project was initiated based on the findings of an ongoing PhD, which identified lack of knowledge and attitudes as the major stumbling blocks preventing ICT adoption in Bangladesh’s public sector. A five year strategic pathway addresses this critical issue by fast tracking ICT management capability of the government officials and decision makers to fill the ‘knowledge gap’ and by empowering them on e-gov processes for its successful implementation. Accordingly, an education program—Educate to Innovate—was undertaken to build the capacity of government officials through a comprehensive, concise training program, supported by a ready reckoner handbook specially prepared to suit the context.

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Educate to Innovate – Fast Tracking ICT Management Capabilities Amongst the Key Government Officials for e-gov Implementation in Bangladesh

This paper empirically investigates the impact of normative social influence on group homogeneity in media preferences and group meeting outcomes in a setting where 58 student groups voluntarily used various communication media over a three-month software development project period. Group homogeneity in media preferences was argued to mediate the impact of normative social influence on group meeting outcomes. The overall results suggest that conformity to group norms is positively associated with increased group homogeneity in media preferences, which in turn is positively associated with increased group meeting outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the importance and implications of understanding normative social influence on technology use and meeting outcomes.

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The Impact of Normative Social Influence on Group Homogeneity in Media Preferences and Group Meeting Outcomes

Motivated by a desire to extend the Social Influence Model of Technology Use, this paper empirically examines the impact of normative social influence on group media preference patterns and group meeting outcomes in a setting where established groups voluntarily used various communication media over a three-month software development project period. The overall results suggest that conformity to group norms is positively associated with increased similarity of group media preferences, which in turn is positively associated with increased group meeting outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the importance and implications of understanding normative social influence on technology use and meeting outcomes.

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The Importance of Normative Social Influence and Media Preference on Group Meeting Outcomes

This study empirically examines university students’ perceptions and their views of when they adopt Instant Messaging (IM) and Short Messaging Service (SMS) and how they perceive and prefer these two media, in conjunction with other media (face-to-face, telephone, and email), in their university learning activities across two different cultural contexts: Australian university and Chinese university. The overall results of this study support some aspects of media richness theory. Although IM is perceived to be richer than email, it is not perceived to be the most popular medium for any situation. Data also demonstrate cultural differences in media perceptions of and preferences for new media. Specifically, Australian students have higher preference for email than their Chinese counterparts and Australian students also perceive SMS as leaner in terms of medium richness and have less preference for SMS than their Chinese counterparts.

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Messaging media perceptions and preferences: A pilot study in two distinct cultures

A critical element of the overarching realm of e-government is the appropriate delivery of government services over the Internet. To date, guidance for government service design has been based on usability and, lately, security issues of the new medium and simple demography-based segmentation approaches aimed at structuring the presentation of government to its constituents. This paper introduces a novel market segmentation approach that allows e-government service designers to prioritise and target online services at individual constituents in a way that is expected to increase adoption of online government services. The segmentation approach and the characteristics of the segments that result are described within the broader context of e-government in Australia. After describing the segmentation, four key issues impeding e-government implementation in Australia are discussed with insights into priorities developed from the segmentation. The paper concludes with a summary of ongoing research in the area that this paper introduces.

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Introducing a Novel Market Segmentation for e-Government Services

As virtual teams become more and more important in organizations, understanding how to improve virtual team outcomes is vital to project success. This study examines how virtual teams interacting via videoconferencing systems may enhance their team outcomes in a Chinese cultural context. The results reveal that traditional face-to-face interaction outperformed videoconferencing teams when both teams had same team-building experience. However, a dialogue-based framework can be employed to help virtual teams to perform as effectively as traditional face-to-face teams that had no such shared basis of effective communication. Implications of these findings are discussed.

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Effectiveness of meeting outcomes in virtual vs. Face-to-face teams: A comparison study in China

The paper presents the rationale behind the selection of the Student Orientation Questionnaire to survey student learning preferences at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). A brief review of the literature’s position on depended versus independent learning and a critical review of two learning preference survey tools is followed by a recitation of initial findings on the learning preferences of the students at ADFA.

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An Initial Investigation into the Student Learning Preferences at ADFA

This paper briefly outlines Wittgenstein’s view of social action described as sets of rules of a game to set the scene for defining a theoretically sound role for e-government. Initially, the ‘rules’ in this consideration are drawn from ‘rules’ of government; already well-understood and widely applied. E-government is seen to be entirely a set of ‘regulatory’ rules that provide guidance on how to ‘play the government game’. On this basis, a novel market segmentation and its consequent service design guidelines are described to illustrate how regulatory ‘rules’ might apply to the government ‘game’.

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Defining e-Government as Rules for Social Action

Motivated by concerns regarding the impact of cultural diversity on group interaction processes and a desire to extend the Social Influence Model of Technology Use, this paper discusses the impact of normative social influence on enhancing group media use and group decision making performance over time in different cultural group compositions. This paper proposes that the strength of attraction to the group influences the similarity in media perception and use of group members. The similarity of group media perception and use is proposed to influence group performance. Concurrently, group cohesion, similarity of media perception and use, and group performance are positively correlated over time. Since culture affects individuals’ values, beliefs and behavior, this paper proposes that the degree of similarity in media perception and media use may differ when group composition varies by culture. Several propositions for empirical examination are highlighted. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the importance and implications of understanding cultural diversity and social influence on technology use and group performance.

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The Effect of Normative Social Influence and Cultural Diversity on Media Use and Group Decision Making

Although a significant amount of research has focused on traditional media choice and use and even on some of the “new” media, these studies have neglected Instant Messaging (IM) and Short Messaging Service (SMS). This study offers a novel exploration of students’ perceptions of and preferences for two new messaging media (IM and SMS) in the context of the use of other traditional and new communication media (face-to-face, telephone, and email) in their university learning activities. The findings reveal media richness is rated in decreasing order of face-to-face, telephone, IM, email and SMS. Face-to-face is the most preferred medium in most communication activities. Students preferred email in a manner similar to the telephone. This study has identified the importance of media experience, familiarity and frequency of use, when selecting media. The overall findings of this study support media richness theory.

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Messaging Media Perceptions and Preferences: An Exploratory Study

This paper reinforces earlier work by statistically validating the measurement dimensions of a new e-Government service market segmentation. The paper shows that the dimensions are necessary and sufficient for describing the segments. It also shows that when applied post-hoc to financial transactions, the segmentation reveals the behaviours of four independent statistical populations, reinforcing the claims of the validity of the segmentation. The paper concludes that the segmentation is valid and points to future research.

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Verifying e-Government Market Segments

The paper outlines the results of a personal journey to reconcile the preference for developing adult learning approaches in undergraduate IS students with their preference for more dependent approaches. The introduction of Grow’s Staged Self-Directed Learning model and an innovation by the author involving deliberately repeating the course material is shown to provide a powerful means of developing adult learning preferences.

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Encouraging Self-directed Learning by Spiralling Through a Course

This paper outlines detailed results of initial analysis of e-government transaction activity to test a new e-Government service market segmentation. Earlier work has established the segmentation and the means of measuring its presence in existing e-Government service activity. The paper presents findings of research analysing four and a half years of e-Government service activity and highlights the unique characteristics of the four proposed segments. From this platform initial suggestions for market segment driven e-Government service design are made and further research plans are outline.

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Analysing e-Government Market Segment Behaviour

This paper presents some early results from research in progress investigating whether the use of market segmentation can aid in the design of e-government services. It reviews the formal characteristics of market segmentations and then proposes measurement dimensions to aid in identifying e-government service segments in a previously defined segmentation. Initial findings from analysis of transaction data for e-government services reinforce the belief that the segmentation proposed is mutually exclusive and exhaustive.

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A Preliminary Analysis of an e-Government Market Segmentation

Learning outcomes are influenced by the environment in which the learning takes place. This article briefly describes how a military academy environment tends to promote pedagogical preferences and surface learning approaches. A plan to validate this proposition and then to overcome it is outlined.

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Does a Military Academy Promote Student Learning?

The integration of e-government is the next major step in the evolution of internet technologies in government. The adoption of a comprehensive technology framework will ease development in this complex arena. This paper examines two of the main integration technologies available, ebXML and Web Services more generally. The paper briefly reviews e-government’s progress to date and the evolution of the two technologies. A ‘rule-of-thumb’ heuristic is used to determine that ebXML is the preferred technology for integrating e-government.

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Should ebXML be Preferred when Integrating e-Government?

One of the most challenging aspects of the future of e-government is the practical implementation of ‘seamless’ government across jurisdictions. In Australia’s federation, this means integrating systems and processes across some combination of the Australian Government, State and Territory Governments, and Local Governments and Authorities. This paper sketches the likely practical implementation of such integrations and then focuses its attention on the issues of accountability for the organisational arrangements described. As well as identifying the limitations present in current legal and regulatory circumstances, the paper proposes one possible approach that uses information technology to facilitate practical scrutiny of a complex multi-jurisdictional operation.

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Accountability in Cross-Tier e-Government Integration

The adoption of e-business by the private sector is still a key thrust of Australian Government Information Economy rhetoric. Many indicators show that Australian business is moving online, however these indicators also show that the smallest-scale businesses (micro-businesses, employing less than 5 people) are lagging in the adoption of e-business. This paper reviews the approach that the Australian Government has adopted in rhetoric and practice to encourage e-business adoption among micro-businesses. It notes that in micro-businesses the influence of the CEO or founder is dominant. On that basis, the paper suggests that the success of encouraging e-business adoption among micro-businesses might be increased by drawing on the multi-channel strategies in the government-to-citizen sphere.

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A New Strategy for Micro-business e-Business Adoption Policy

This discussion paper represents a preliminary draft of a submission by the authors to IPAA. The submission has been accepted for a collection of papers presenting development issues for e-Government in Australia. Here we explore aspects of e-Business take-up by micro business in Australia and its significance for government policy development. We begin by highlighting a number of underlying assumptions that underpin multi-channel delivery strategies but which have not been given adequate attention in the literature. For example, we question whether all businesses are committed to electronic interactions with government. As a number of multi-channel approaches are currently being trialled by government agencies we refer to a case study of a recent implementation of a multi-channel G2B approach. This paper represents a preliminary overview of a larger study, which will draw on case study and survey data. These instruments will enable us to explore the differing perceptions of multi-channel delivery by users representing business ‘customers’ (G2B) in contrast to individual ‘customers’ (G2C). We conclude this discussion paper by indicating some implications of our preliminary findings for government agencies intent on building sustainable online communities.

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Understanding the Influence of National Culture on the Development of Shared Group Norms of Effective Communication: An Exploratory Study in Two Distinct Cultures

This discussion paper represents a preliminary draft of a submission by the authors to IPAA. The submission has been accepted for a collection of papers presenting development issues for e-Government in Australia. Here we explore aspects of e-Business take-up by micro business in Australia and its significance for government policy development. We begin by highlighting a number of underlying assumptions that underpin multi-channel delivery strategies but which have not been given adequate attention in the literature. For example, we question whether all businesses are committed to electronic interactions with government. As a number of multi-channel approaches are currently being trialled by government agencies we refer to a case study of a recent implementation of a multi-channel G2B approach.

This paper represents a preliminary overview of a larger study, which will draw on case study and survey data. These instruments will enable us to explore the differing perceptions of multi-channel delivery by users representing business ‘customers’ (G2B) in contrast to individual ‘customers’ (G2C). We conclude this discussion paper by indicating some implications of our preliminary findings for government agencies intent on building sustainable online communities.

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Multi-channel Delivery: e-Commerce Adoption Strategies for Micro-Businesses

Academic research on the many facets of the e-Procurement implementation in the public sector is still in its early stages. Many issues still need to be investigated. Most importantly, an integrated tool for the overall performance measurement of e-Procurement implementation is yet to be developed. This paper presents the results of a study whose objective was to develop components that constructs the instrument to measure the success of an e-Procurement implementation in the public sector in Australia. The overall goal of this preliminary investigation is threefold. Firstly, this paper provides definitions of e-Procurement, procurement process and e-Procurement tools. Secondly, various drivers of e-Procurement implementation and the status of major e-Procurement initiatives within the Australian public sector are reviewed. Thirdly, some key e-Procurement benefits and performance indicators as discussed by various authors and researchers have are presented.

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Measuring Performance of e-Procurement Implementation in The Australian Public Sector: Results of a Preliminary Investigation

The paper presents the results of a literature review and survey conducted in February and March 2003 seeking to identify the interactions between the Commonwealth and local governments in Australia. The literature review set expectations of the nature of interactions, but the survey revealed a different, more complex picture. The paper highlights the contrast between reality as reported in the survey and the expectations that the literature set. Finally, the paper points to areas where interoperability between these two tiers of government might fruitfully be pursued, some of which are counter-intuitive.

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Re-ordering Priorities for e-Government Integration across Tiers of Government

E-government services are already available and their adoption rivals that of commercial sector services (Al-Kibsi et al., 2001; Mellor, Parr & Hood, 2001; Smolenski, 2000). There is still a long way to go though, and as the ‘low-hanging fruit’ has already been picked (Swedberg & Douglas, 2001), progress on e-government service development and delivery is likely to slow. The harder the implementation issues become, the more that implementation teams can benefit from guidance on how to make progress in spite of apparently intractable problems. This paper develops a refinement of the ‘classical’ segmentation of e-government service recipients: citizens, businesses, other governments and employees. The usefulness of this segmentation is then illustrated by using it as a lens through which to view several of the key issues facing e-government implementation today. The paper concludes that the segmentation is useful in decision-making when attempting to implement e-government services and identifies further research areas that are being pursued.

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Market Segmentation for e-Government Services

It is common rhetoric that e-business is good for business, and that this applies equally in the public and private sectors. Public and private sector organisations, however, are different in focus and operation. Are there, then, implications on the design of electronic services if the services are to be delivered by public organisations? This paper seeks to answer that question. It draws on public administration literature to identify the differences between public sector and private sector organisations, then works through the differences attributed to actions between the organisations and their boundaries (specifically, the service delivery transactions) examining the implications of being a public organisation. Several implications for service process design are identified. The paper concludes that the publicness of government organisations leads to certain desirable attributes of electronic services becoming minimum requirements when the electronic services are implemented in the public sector.

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What are the Implications of being a Public Organisation on Creating Online Services?