Technology

E-government is the use of technologies by the government of a country to provide its citizens with better public services and for streamlining and computerizing a majority of the governmental operations. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, e-government implementation initiatives were taken in 1998. The country is still striving hard to become amongst the information societies of the world. However, a number of challenges are in the way of successful implementation such as problems in accountability, lack of qualified staff, a lack of internet users and rules and regulations. Another problem area is that of the citizen awareness of the adoption of e-government in Saudi Arabia. This level is likely to be very low and so it adds to another challenge for the government. This level needs to be measured so that it can be improved. Moreover, the problems of these citizens need to be identified also. Carrying out a research to study these aspects will have implications for both the Saudi society and the Saudi government. This research will answer these questions and optimistically guide members of the government and citizens towards a more successful implementation of e-government, by identifying major issues including citizen awareness.

Background
Information and Communication technologies (ICTs) are changing the way people live their lives  the way they communicate, they way they carry out transactions and simply, the way they do business. In the sphere of the government, ICTs is changing governmental operations in a number of areas (Pascual, 2003) and is giving rise to the growing role of e-government. E-government is said to be a general term describing the use of technologies to facilitate the operation of government and the disbursement of government information and services (McGuigan, n.d.)

However, the spread of ICT is irregular. Meaning that in some areas the impact is a move to knowledge based economies while in other regions, there may be no impact at all. This gap in the impact of ICT marks the irregular advancement of economies. It also underscores the governmental role in the information age (Pascual, 2003).

It is an interest in this disparity between economies progress in the information age that has become the motivation for my research. The implementation of e-government and e-offices has been carried out in a number of economies, mostly developed. The real challenge, however, is that of implementing e-government initiatives in economies that are a little less developed. These are economies where all citizens do not have access to ICTs, except those residing in the bigger cities. This means that the awareness levels of these citizens is also low and therefore, implementation of e-government becomes a challenge. It is this level of awareness and the challenges surrounding implementation of e-government that is the core of my dissertation. The country chosen, as a subject of study, where awareness level of citizens and challenges facing implementation would be measured is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is one of the richer developing country of the Middle Eastern region that took e-government implementation initiatives in 1998 (Sahraoui et al., 2006)  and is striving to enhance these initiatives. E-government efforts in Saudi Arabia are greatly concentrated in the bigger cities like Riyadh, Mecca and Madinah. In contrast however, a thorough research in these cities also show that they have just hardly managed to implement basic e-Government services, together with a number of hurdles to successful implementation and advancement linked to the government and the citizens (Al-Fakhri et al., 2008)

In a relatively newer report by the Internet World usage and population statistics (IWS, 2008) There has been a shocking increase in the number of internet users in eight years from approximately 200,000 to 6,380,000, a growth of 3,090.0 . Despite this increase, implementing an e-government is still a painful process. The major challenges surrounding the adoption of an e-government program are problems in accountability, rules and regulations, finding qualified staff and internet usage (Alsheha, 2007).

Therefore, the rationale for this dissertation is to study the level of awareness of Saudi citizens regarding the adoption of e-government in their country, and to understand what problems in relation to this implementation are, for the citizens and the government. On the whole, this dissertation would be an important tool in providing readers with information on e-government in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Aims and Objectives
The aim of this dissertation is to study the Saudi citizens level of awareness about the adoption of an e-government system, how this can be improved and the challenges faced in its implementation, both by the citizens and the government.

The objectives for meeting this aim include a review of the literature on E-government in Saudi Arabia  what the challenges of its implementation are, what citizens know about it or whether they know anything about such an adoption of technologies, and whether they are being benefited or not with its implementation so far. This secondary research would give the researcher an idea about what the challenges facing the government are.

Another objective would be to gather primary information regarding the topic. Citizen awareness levels and their problems will be identified and measured using questionnaires, on a sample. This objective would meet the aim of answering questions regarding citizen awareness and their problems.

Moreover, another objective would be to analyze results and give recommendations for improvement of citizen awareness, based on this analysis. This would be a completely different phase altogether. The final objective in meeting this aim would be to write up the dissertation and submit it to concerned persons andor parties.

Approach
This dissertation would be conducted using both secondary and primary forms of research. Secondary research would involve carrying out a review of relevant literature written on e-government in Saudi Arabia. Literature on e-government will be studied so the researcher can present the concept clearly with enough information on hand.

Moreover literature on implementation of e-government in Saudi Arabia since 1998 to 2008 will be reviewed such as Yesser (Saudi e-Government Program, 2010 . More recent statistics, for instance, on the number of internet users, will be identified using agency reports such as Internet World Usage, etc. Moreover literature on what challenges the Saudi government and Saudi citizens have faced with its implementing would be read. A list of all the references that have already been reviewed and will be used later again is presented in the bibliography.

As far as primary research or field work is concerned, it will be used to identify and measure the level of citizen awareness and the challenges they are facing with the adoption of an e-government system. This would be an important source for eliciting most of the information we need to know about the user aspect  the citizens citizen awareness and their problems regarding its implementation.

To gather this information, a questionnaire (see Appendix A for a portion of questionnaire) will be devised with both opened- and closed-ended questions. Likert scales will also be used in a few questions to gauge the degree to which citizens are aware. The questionnaire would be written in easy language, free from jargon, for the non-technical citizens of Saudi Arabia.

The population of the research study will be all the citizens of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia. However, the sample of the study will include only 70 citizens, both internet and non-internet users, in the age bracket of 15 to 40. Such a variable sample is chosen for the purpose of gathering as much information as the researcher can. For example, by including people who use and who do not use the internet, both, will give the researchers an idea of how important internet usage is as a factor for creating citizen awareness. Moreover, using a sample with such a wide age bracket would give results about how important the age is in the success and awareness of implementation of e-government.

However, the problem with such variability is that this small sample of 70 will be divided between these variances. For instance, not many people from the age of 40 alone, or 25 alone will be in the sample. All age levels will have only a few numbers from the total sample because the sample is significantly small. However, the sample has to be kept small because of the cost and time limitations.

Therefore, the two major research methods would include a review of existing literature on the topic and questionnaire method. Both have limitations but the researcher would find the best possible utilization of the information available to derive conclusions and recommendations.

Plan
The first major task of the dissertation involves carrying out a literature review. This will be a researching literature on e-government in Saudi Arabia when implementation initiatives were taken, the problems faced by citizens and government, and reasons for its delay. This will take three weeks to do because extensive secondary research will also form the basis of the primary research. The primary research will start as soon as the researchers have a fair idea of what questions to put in the questionnaire. Questionnaires will then be distributed to the sample and gathered from them. This will take two weeks in total  making the questionnaire, distributing them and taking them back. They will be analyzed once the researchers gather them. This will be an important task and would decide the outcome of our study. Therefore, three weeks will be spent interpreting this important data.

Research Writing would take two weeks in total followed by writing conclusions and presenting recommendations. This would take an additional week. The Final Draft will then be written in one week and the report will be submitted in the final week.

Major milestones are questionnaire gathering (by the end of fourth week), interpretation (end of seventh week) and writing the final draft (end of 11th week). All this information is illustrated in the Gantt Chart given below (Figure 1).