Developing a framework for assessing adaptability of citizen-focused e-Government initiatives in developing countries: The Case of Tanzania; Exploratory Phase Results

Citizens' adoption of e-government initiatives is a key element towards successful implementation of e-government projects. Understanding the factors that may potentially influence citizens' adoption of e-government plays a key role when developing government electronic services for the public. Such an understanding allows informed planning for, designing, and deploying of initiatives that citizens are more likely to adopt.

Limited studies have been cited to study factors influencing citizens' adoption of e-government initiatives from developing countries, specifically from Africa. This may lead, for example in the African world, to designing and implementing e-government initiatives with limited understanding of the deployment context. Such a limited understanding may potentially contribute to the failure of e-government projects in developing countries.

This paper presents preliminary emerging issues from an ongoing inductive study, being conducted in Tanzania, a developing country. The emerging issues suggest that the adoptability of the citizen-focused e-government initiatives is determined by four main themes: 1) government preparedness, 2) citizens' preparedness, 3) adequacy of access-facilitating infrastructure, 4) service intrinsic issues. An attempt will also be made to organise these themes into a framework for assessing citizen-focused e-government initiatives in developing countries. The paper contributes in the e-government adoption literature by paper extending the adoption research and bringing up ideas from a developing African country. In addition the paper attempts to propose a working tool for e-government practitioners in such countries.

The grounded theory approach was adopted as the main research strategy; however, at the empirical level five main activities were designed. These include 1) general literature review to familiarise the researcher with the e-government adoption research area; 2) exploratory study for understanding the context and identifying general e-government adoption factors; 3) organizing the factors into framework, 4) in-depth case study research to refine the framework, and 5) Framework testing and refinement.