Using ICT: A proposed model for reducing the gap between citizens and governments towards enhancing public services quality: Case of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Information and communication technology (ICT) has been adopted by many governments around the world in the form of e-government to support and facilitate their communication. In addition, ICT offers new ways of delivering government services to the public. Saudi Arabia is an example of a country that has adopted technology with these aims, but it has lacked in enabling the engagement of citizens with government to deliver public service projects with assured quality standards. The failings are blamed on the system's lack of support for stakeholder oversight. In addition, the official monitoring committee performed poorly during project construction and delivery. In light of these inadequacies, more effective monitoring of implementation and operation of projects is required in order to improve the quality of public services from a long-term perspective. Fixes have been proposed to the lack of two-way communication between citizens and the government by inviting feedback from citizens through social media and other communication channels, however, a cohesive overarching model that enables the engagement of citizens with government projects has yet to be devised. There is a clear need for a model that can be used to design official systems to facilitate consultation between the government and the public, and to invite feedback from key stakeholders throughout each stage of the project life cycle.

Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop a conceptual model to engage citizens in monitoring the quality and the progress of public service projects. A model has been designed based on e-participation studies, theoretical work presented in the literature and case studies conducted to analyse and evaluate the available communication channels. As result, 10 different components were identified to assist proposing a model.

The proposed model was developed and then evaluated by 14 experts. This evaluation led to the inclusion of a new component for dealing with emergency situations. Subsequently,an online questionnaire was distributed over Saudi municipality experts in two cities to evaluate and confirm the model components on a wider scale. Accordingly, 85 responses were collected and analysed; the results confirmed the relevance of the 11 model components. Furthermore, 23 experts working in Saudi municipalities were interviewed to identify the challenges that may be encountered on implementing the model. In addition, a revision of the available e-systems offered by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs in Saudi Arabia was made to determine their similarity to the proposed model. The baseline for comparison was made using the 11 components identified in this study to assist in identifying the challenges more precisely. As result, six main challenges affecting the existing E-Systems along with eight main challenges that may affect the proposed model were identified. Finally, this research recommends technologies and features that might facilitate the implementation of the model.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Khalied, Mohammed Al Barrak: orcid.org/0000-0001-9224-5926

ORCID for Leslie Carr: orcid.org/0000-0002-2113-9680

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