Title: Can e-government empower Jordanian citizens and reinforce citizenship?

Authors: Emad Abu-Shanab; Rania Bakier; Mona Bataineh

Addresses: Accounting and Information Systems Department, College of Business and Economics, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar ' United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Amman, 21163, Jordan ' CADER (Change Agent for Arab Development and Education Reform), Amman, 21163, Jordan

Abstract: The recent political events in the Middle East made the relationship between governments and their citizens at stake. Governments need to strengthen citizens' empowerment, and their levels of citizenship to improve the collective capacity of society. It is expected that good public services, trust, effective participation and social inclusion reinforced by the implementation of e-government, will improve citizenship and empowerment levels. The Jordanian government has made a big leap toward providing high quality e-services via the new e-government portal. This study explored Jordanian perceptions regarding a comprehensive set of constructs that would ultimately predict perceptions of citizenship and empowerment. This study tried to explore such context utilising a sample of 299 responses from Jordan. Data is collected and analysed to test a model that predicts citizenship level focusing on e-trust, e-participation and empowerment. Results indicated a strong support for the model and predicted the level of citizenship by 41.4%.

Keywords: e-government; e-citizenship; empowerment; e-participation; trust; digital divide; usefulness; ease of use; Jordan.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEG.2019.101493

International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2019 Vol.11 No.2, pp.182 - 204

Received: 15 May 2017
Accepted: 27 Feb 2018
Published online: 11 Aug 2019 *

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