E-Services’ Effects on Dubai Community

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Executive Summary

E-services are a beneficial technology that helps organize and streamline many business and managerial processes. Their use in the public sector brings tangible benefits to both the state and the citizens. However, there might exist some issues that discourage people from using them. This paper will overview the use of e-services in Dubai and evaluate their impact on citizen satisfaction based on existing publications.

Statement of the Problem

The adoption of e-services in the public sector usually leads to a more convenient interaction between citizens and the state. The state can automate some processes, lightening the workload of its employees, while the citizens can perform bureaucratic tasks, look for information, and request services from the comfort of their own homes. That arrangement is beneficial to all parties, but only if the e-services are implemented flawlessly. Unfortunately, an undertaking of that scale is rarely perfect and certainly never easy. There are often issues with the e-services that turn potential users off. Customer satisfaction is a crucial factor in the implementation of e-government technology. It needs to be regularly measured, and problems need to be analyzed and promptly solved.

This paper aims to evaluate the implementation of e-services in Dubai’s public sector. E-services exist to increase the quality of life in Dubai, and some factors might be detrimental to it. The possible issues could be delays in paperwork processing, lack of a physical paper trail, and lack of human communication, although more are likely to be identified. After that, the paper will attempt to create guidelines that would help create a more customer-driven solution.

Purpose of the Research

The purpose of this paper is to measure the success of digital solutions in Dubai’s public sector to identify the parts that work well and those that do not. The measurement of these factors will help policymakers understand what needs improvement and how to improve it. In order to do so, several questions must be answered, such as ‘what are the impacts of using e-government in Dubai?’ The analysis will be conducted according to the theoretical base, using such primary sources as citizens’ testimonies, publications, and reports.

Objectives of the Research

The first objective of the paper is to determine the main goals of using E-services in the public sector of Dubai, the extent of the e-services’ implementation, the impact that the usage of e-services has had on Dubai community, and the role of adopting e-services in enhancing the community’s satisfaction. This objective is primarily dictated by the research questions and serves the purpose of analyzing the use of e-services in Dubai and the impact that they make on its citizens. The second objective is to find problems with the current system and offer solutions based on existing literature.

Scope of the Research

The paper analyzes the e-government of Dubai and its effects on the population through a number of primary and secondary sources. Dubai offers numerous mobile digital solutions under its Smart Dubai umbrella, as well as e-services through the official United Arab Emirates website, and others. They all fall in the e-government category, and thus within the scope of this research. The particular features of those services and the impact they have on Dubai’s citizens will be narrowed down in the data collection stage.

Research Questions

The research questions that this paper aims to answer are as follows: to what extent have the e-services been adopted by the public sector in Dubai, what are the impacts of using e-services on the Dubai community, and what is the role of e-services in enhancing community’s satisfaction? These questions serve as guidelines for the analysis of Dubai’s e-government solutions and their effects on the customers. The implicit research question is, “how can it be done better?”

Literature Review

E-services are, in broad terms, the services that are provided through electronic networks, presently mostly via the Internet. Private businesses can provide these electronic services and use them as a customer-centric approach to marketing, relationship management, or customer care. They can also be used to interact with business partners and suppliers or organize the inner workings of the business itself. The e-services can control everything a company does, aside from the provision of physical products or services (Rust & Kannan, 2016). E-governments are closely related to e-services, as they also employ electronic networks to organize themselves and interact with its citizens and partners. The goals of implementing e-services on the state level are innovation, transparency, efficiency, and convenience (Bonsón, Torres, Royo, & Flores, 2012). The use of e-services in the public sector is an essential developmental metric for a country.

It is a reasonable assertion that e-governments are primarily citizen-centric. Thus, they become widely used where the social environment is conducive to their development, and if they are developed with certain considerations in mind. One of the pre-requisites of e-government use is the citizens’ trust in the Internet as a medium. This trust is mostly related to data security and privacy, so the digital services in the public sector need to be as secure as their commercial counterparts (Bélanger & Carter, 2008). While data security is a straightforward concept, privacy may be somewhat more complicated. There exists a concern that a government might use its power over the citizens’ data to infringe on their expression. A closely related concern is censorship, as some governments may also leverage electronic platforms to hide information from their citizens (Yang, & Xu, 2010). The government can transform itself to use the e-platforms for the benefit of its citizens, but it can also transform the platforms for the benefit of itself.

Each particular government has its features that do not disappear as the government gets digital. The reform of related state agencies must mirror the adoption of e-services in order for accountability and transparency to increase as well (Wong, & Welch, 2004). Some citizens are naturally more skeptical and less trusting of the government, whether that is justified or not. Research shows that positive experience can sway skeptical users into trusting these services more and therefore using them. Another way to increase the users’ trust is to collaborate with the private sector and adopt their security practices, as people tend to perceive the government and the businesses differently (Bélanger, & Carter, 2008). People can also be convinced by positive testimonies from other users of those services.

Other obstacles to the implementation of e-governments include the general preference that people have for physical paper documents. In a survey performed by Howard (2019), respondents provided several reasons why they found physical documents more accessible and more convenient to work with than e-services. Some noted that in the event of a power failure, it is impossible to get information that would otherwise be printed on a piece of paper. There was also a concern that some services may go out of business, and valuable documents would be lost. Paper documents were also easier to keep track of as they arrived in the mail, and served as a reminder of outstanding bills for some people. Paper invoices and statements were also more convenient to save for tax or business records than electronic ones. That contrasts with Dubai’s attempts to go paperless as part of its Smart Dubai program (“Paperless Dubai,” n.d.). This initiative can cause some inconvenience to its citizens in light of these surveys.

One of the primary drivers of e-services’ success with customers is the quality of service. Several studies in different commercial industries support the assertion that the quality of service is directly responsible for customer satisfaction. Ayo, Oni, Adewoye, and Eweoya (2016) have found that in the case of online banking, the quality of service was the most important influence on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and, consequently, the success of the business. Hussain, Al Nasser, and Hussain (2015) have analyzed an airline in the UAE and have found that the quality of service is also crucial for generating goodwill and retaining customers. Janita and Miranda (2018) have found that in the education sector, the first priority was security, and the second priority, with a small margin, was the quality of information. Seeing as information is also essential for the operation of e-government, the state e-services follow similar trends.

The concept of quality appears to be somewhat different and subjective across the articles, but there exists a model one can adopt to evaluate a service exhaustively. Alanezi and Sellami (2019) offer a framework of quality assessment that encompasses system functionality, content, manageability, procedures, and customer support. The system functionality describes the technical implementation, such as ease of use, privacy, security, and reliability. The content means information, both in text and in media, and its presentation through web design. Manageability is also a technical concept that includes processing times and user experience. Procedures are interactive features of the website or application, its personalization options, and the quality of maintenance that the staff does behind the scenes. Finally, customer support describes the needed information, feedback, and transparency of the service. This model can serve as a suitable benchmark for e-services in Dubai.

Dubai has unique conditions that were conducive to the development of digital solutions and smart technologies. AlSayegh, Hossan, and Slade (2019) note that some of the essential factors in Dubai’s success were public goodwill, financial support, and effective change management. Badran (2018) asserts that the support from the political leaders also played a crucial role, as Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid initiated some directives on the development of smart technologies. The researcher also explains how the change in the managerial culture promoted integration, collaboration, and flexibility for the benefit of the user. The increased internet connectivity and network security also had a remarkable effect. Alketbi (2018) found that employee empowerment, security, and training contributed as well. He also states that e-government projects are capital-intensive, but give significant returns on investment, which fits well in the affluent city of Dubai.

With that in mind, there are obstacles to the widespread implementation of e-government solutions in Dubai. The digital divide can have a detrimental effect on e-services. The concept of the digital divide means that some people do not enjoy the same degree of Internet access as others for various reasons (Van Dijk, 2017). According to Marzooqi, Nuaimi, and Qirim (2017), the problem of the digital divide is present in Dubai, and it can be one of the reasons some citizens do not use the technology. Some people do not trust their government enough to entrust their information to the government-run service. Some services may also not be accessible to disabled people, which can limit their use of digital technology.

Research Methodology

The preliminary methodology of this paper is mostly the analysis of existing data. The data on the possible issues related to e-services will be collected through several primary sources. These include testimonies in social media, unstructured interviews, and academic publications. These sources were outlined because of the ease of access and expected robustness of data on the positive and negative aspects of Dubai’s e-government.

Expected Results

The preliminary research on secondary sources has shown several aspects of e-governments that signify quality and convenience. Dubai’s e-services will be evaluated according to these aspects, and additional data will be used to find other issues if they exist. The paper is being written with the expectation that there are several issues with Dubai’s e-services, such as the citizens’ unwillingness to use them, significant processing delays, or bureaucratic errors. These issues are expected to impact customer satisfaction and, thus, the quality of the services. Therefore, the expected results of this paper are the data on e-government’s positive and negative impact on citizens’ satisfaction.

Conclusion

As Dubai develops its citizen-oriented e-government solutions, there may remain issues concerning its use. There are numerous benefits to adopting digital and smart technologies in the public sector. Dubai has been successful in implementing e-government solutions in the last two decades. However, there may also be less-explored issues that decrease the satisfaction of citizens, and therefore must be addressed.

References

Alanezi, M. A., & Sellami, A. (2019). An unified framework for measuring e-service quality. Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, 9(3), 4249-4254.

Alketbi, H. (2018). An evaluation of e-government effectiveness in Dubai smart government Departments. Web.

AlSayegh, A., Hossan, C., & Slade, B. (2019). Radical improvement of e-government services in Dubai. International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 25(1), 53.

Ayo, C. K., Oni, A. A., Adewoye, O. J., & Eweoya, I. O. (2016). E-banking users’ behaviour: E-service quality, attitude, and customer satisfaction. International Journal of Bank Marketing, 34(3), 347–367.

Badran, A. (2018). Smart-Governments for Smart Cities: The case of Dubai Smart-Government. In W. Samad, & E. Azar (Eds.), Smart Cities in the Gulf (pp. 59-82). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bélanger, F., & Carter, L. (2008). Trust and risk in e-government adoption. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 17(2), 165–176.

Bonsón, E., Torres, L., Royo, S., & Flores, F. (2012). Local e-government 2.0: Social media and corporate transparency in municipalities. Government Information Quarterly, 29(2), 123–132.

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Howard, A. (2019) Consumer Action survey: Given the choice, consumers prefer a paper trail.Consumer Action News. Web.

Hussain, R., Al Nasser, A., & Hussain, Y. K. (2015). Service quality and customer satisfaction of a UAE-based airline: An empirical investigation. Journal of Air Transport Management, 42, 167–175.

Marzooqi, S. A., Nuaimi, E. A., & Qirim, N. A. (2017). E-governance (G2C) in the public sector: Citizens acceptance to E-government systems – Dubai’s case. In ICC ’17 Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Internet of things, Data and Cloud Computing (Article No. 112). New York, NY: ACM.

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Rust, R. T., & Kannan, P. K. (2016). E-service: New directions in theory and practice. Abington, England: Routledge.

Van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2017). Digital Divide: Impact of Access. In P. Rössler, C. A. Hoffner, & L. van Zoonen (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects, (pp. 1–11), Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Wong, W., & Welch, E. W. (2004). Does e-government promote accountability? A comparative analysis of website openness and government accountability. Governance, 17(2), 275-297.

Yang, K., & Xu, X. (2010). E-government in mainland China. In E. Berman, M. Moon, and H. Choi (Eds.), Public Administration in East Asia, (pp. 165-192). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

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