Title: Are security and privacy equally important in influencing citizens to use e-consultation?

Authors: Lornie Enggong; Brian Whitworth

Addresses: School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University, Albany Campus, State Highway 17, 0632 Auckland, New Zealand ' School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University, Albany Campus, State Highway 17, 0632 Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract: This paper investigates the importance of two factors: security and privacy in e-government based on the e-consultation aspect of government-to-citizen (G2C) interaction. Prior research on what factors influence citizens in using e-government has focused mainly at the personal level e.g., security, ease of use, usefulness, etc. The advent of information and communication technology (ICT) particularly the web 2.0 technology makes citizens sharing common interest to communicate with one another, suggesting bigger voice or speak of higher volume when dealing with government agencies. Therefore, it is important to investigate what other factors contribute to citizens to use e-government application especially at the community level. From a socio-technical design perspective, this paper proposes an e-government framework that reflects G2C interaction by introducing privacy as a community factor of an e-government application in addition to security as a personal factor. Results suggest privacy is rated slightly more important compared to security in influencing citizens to use e-consultation.

Keywords: citizen participation; government-to-citizen; G2C interaction; security; privacy; community factors; e-consultation; electronic government; electronic consultation; e-government; personal factors; sociotechnical design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEG.2013.058368

International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2013 Vol.6 No.2, pp.152 - 166

Received: 03 Nov 2012
Accepted: 17 Jun 2013

Published online: 18 Dec 2013 *

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