Title: E-government diffusion in Iran: a public sector employees' perspective

Authors: Sarfaraz Hashemkhani Zolfani; Maedeh Sedaghat; Meysam Donyavi Rad

Addresses: Department of Management, Science and Technology, Technology Foresight Group, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), P.O. Box 1585-4413, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Management, Research Institute of Shakhes Pajouh, P.O. Box 81746-73441, Isfahan, Iran ' Department of Industrial Management, Kar Institute of Higher Education, Qazvin, Iran

Abstract: Governments worldwide, since the 1990s, have launched projects with the mission to simplify delivery of services through electronic means (Torres et al., 2005). E-government is a breakthrough of communication and transaction between a government and its citizens or government and industries. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most salient factors that are currently influencing the development and diffusion of e-government in Iran as perceived by government employees involved in e-government service delivery. After studying previous researches, seven effective e-government diffusion indicators are selected for prioritising using fuzzy AHP and based on the experts' viewpoints who are the government employees involved in e-government service delivery. The findings reveal that accessibility, security and availability of public services are the first three most important criteria among citizens in relation to e-government adoption in Iran, respectively. This research strategy offers a new and more balanced perspective of e-government adoption and diffusion in Iran.

Keywords: e-government diffusion; e-government adoption; public sector employees; communication technologies; public sector organisations; employee attitudes; fuzzy AHP; analytical hierarchy process; fuzzy logic; Iran; electronic government; government services; service delivery; accessibility; security; availability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2014.059251

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2014 Vol.15 No.2, pp.205 - 221

Published online: 07 Jun 2014 *

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