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

The e-Government means that use of internet technology as a platform for exchanging information, providing services or transaction with citizens businesses and other arms of government in order to improve internal efficiency. The primary delivery models are Government-to-Citizen or Government-to-Customer (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B) and Government-to-Government (G2G) and Government-to-Employees (G2E).

The e-government in Malaysia was initiated by the introduction of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) in year 1996 and it was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. It has to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. Beside this, it also will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.

There have 7 pilot flagship applications introduced in MSC. The objectives of those flagship applications are to jump start and go faster of MSC, to enhance national competitiveness, to creation of high value jobs and to make MSC become a national hub. The 7 main projects are:
(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

The factor that will lead to a successful to implementation is E-government requires leadership. Leadership is required in the early stage of e-government to be able to gain acceptance of concepts and benefits. Beside this, leadership also required to manage change and continue support for the e-government project.

The implementation of e-government increases the need for the ICT-related skills in government. The skills required are not only technical but also the decision making skills. The managers must be able to lead the organization’s IT department and integrate the ICT strategy.

Beside this, monitoring and evaluate are essential to effective e-government because the assessment are useful to decision-makers with priority to the assessment of demand, benefits and service quality.

In Malaysia, the uses of e-government is not that much because the citizen are not familiar with the ICT skills so that for the citizen’s adoption strategies is the government should communicate the benefits of e-government services to citizens. Emphasizing those advantages will lead to higher levels of perceived usefulness and relative advantages. Beside this, the government can increase the perceived compatibility by making the adoption of online services as faultless as possible because these will significant citizens intention to use the e-government services.