An investigation into sustainable e-government in Saudi Arabia

Sustainable e-government has become an important consideration for governments. However, existing e-government literature on sustainability is sparse. A quantitative empirical study was conducted to survey the perceptions of Saudi Arabian citizens with regard to the characteristics of sustainable e-government. Survey data gathered from 442 respondents were analysed to investigate their understanding of the importance of each of these characteristics, allowing the identification of a set of key characteristics likely to influence citizens’ utilization of sustainable e-government services. The study also investigated users’ perceptions of three key barriers to the ability of policymakers to develop and adopt sustainable e-government systems. The results indicate that the characteristics perceived to be the most significant were usability, security, performance, transparency and flexibility, whereas respondents were relatively unconcerned with the social, environmental and economic dimensions of the impact of the software used in e-government systems. This study has also shed new light on experts’ perceptions by investigating sustainable e-government features from their perspective. Data gathered from 83 respondents affirms the importance of sustainable e-government, the importance of cooperation between software development department and government agencies during designing and using sustainable e-government, and the influence of sustainability qualities on e-government. These results will be utilised in future as part of a framework for evaluating sustainable e-government.