Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
Government is an ‘institutional superstructure that society uses to translate politics into policies and legislation’ (Kettl, 2002). It is actually ‘a dynamic mixture of goals, structures and functions’ (Pardo, 2000 p.2) and its ‘foremost job is to focus society on achieving the public interest’ (Riley, 2003). Nowadays, governments worldwide have heavily invested in e-government - the use of information and communication technologies and the internet to support their work processes, to improve the delivery of government services to citizens, businesses, and other government agencies, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and bring better governance (Alruwaie et al., 2012; Panagis et al., 2008). Despite huge investments, not all e-government programs and projects across the globe are successful. Their adoption, in developed and particularly in developing countries, has fallen far below expectations and a systematic discrepancy exits between the offered e-government services and facilities and actual citizens’ take up (Al-Zaabi et al., 2012; Akkaya et al., 2012; Odongo, 2009; UN 2010). Up to now governments drive their development agenda and investments on e-government based on their understanding (Mofleh & Wanous 1999). A user-centered e-government strategy is essential in case that e-government is to succeed (Schedler & Summermatter, 2007). By putting people first, governments may improve the quality of their services by making them more usable and useful. The lack of demand for e-government services and the under-estimated adoption of offered services have resulted in the need for research into understanding the factors that are influencing the adoption of e-government (Dwivedi et al., 2011). As studies in e-government are “increasing in number, related models offered in the academic literature are mainly conceptual; while empirical studies are heavily ignored” noted Ahmed (2013). Thus, empirical research becomes critical in understanding the expectations of citizens; factors affecting adoption and diffusion of e-government services; and customers’ motivations and decision making mechanisms towards using electronic services (Akkaya et al., 2012). Moreover, the factors that are influencing the adoption and diffusion of e-government varies between countries across the globe (Heeks, 2005) and despite the fact that are being explored, “the nature of the use of existing theories and models of technology adoption and diffusion utilized in e-government adoption research has yet to be investigated” (Rana et al., 2012).
Potential users of e-government are also public servants that many times are forgotten and are simply expected to adopt e-government (Baldwin et al., 2012). For the moment, little research effort has been devoted at investigating government public servants attitudes on e-government adoption (Baldwin et al., 2012; Heeks & Bailur 2007), especially in Greece. During the investigation ‘Excluding users can lead to poor design, recalcitrance and refusal to adopt, even subversion, and ultimate user failure’ (Baldwin et al., 2012 p. 106), thus it is important to take into consideration their opinions and attitudes. This paper seeks to address this gap and investigates factors that determine the adoption of e-government services by public servants in Greece.