Exploring the Factors that affect E-government Implementation in Jordan over Time

The Information and Communication Technology (ICT), especially the Internet, revolution has dramatically changed how citizens can interact with their government. E-government, that is utilising ICT to change and/or improve the relationship between government, citizens, businesses and other government entities (World Bank 2007), has become a popular focus of government efforts in many developed and developing countries. Jordan is one such developing country that has embarked on an e-government initiative. Progress to-date comprises the provision of a few key services for citizens and the interconnection of a subset of government departments. Existing empirical research on e-government has been undertaken principally within western developed countries. Of those studies that have focused on e-government implementation within developing countries, a few have identified one or more factors that play a part in the progress or otherwise of an e-government capability. Whilst useful as a combined list of possible factors to bear in mind, these studies have been based on “one-off” snapshot analyses of the situations found within the countries being studied. There is no indication as to whether the existence and predominance of such factors vary over time, and the nature of that variation. This paper presents some preliminarily results of one and half year investigation to explore the factors that effect E-government implementation within Jordan. It starts with a brief overview of e-government in general, and provides some background information on Jordan in general and the ICT sector within Jordan in particular. Data from the first two cycles of fieldwork which were completed by the author are presented, the analysis of which was based upon Strauss & Corbin’s variant of the Grounded Theory method (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Even from these preliminary results, it is clear that there are differing levels of dynamism and characteristics that the factors identified as effecting the e-government implementation within Jordan possess. The value of this paper lies in the fact that it is one of only a handful of papers that focus on issues affecting e-government implementation specifically in Jordan. Furthermore, it uniquely views the influencing factors from a dynamic rather than static perspective.