Abstract
The adoption of ICT by MPs as mechanism for socioeconomic and political communications with their representatives in various constituencies has been investigated along side with system factor, social factors, individual factors, and trust in ICT system as moderator. The results show the existence of negative relationship between system factor and MPs e-communication. But when moderated with trust variable, a positive significant effect was obtained. The same moderating effect of trust was envisaged for self-efficacy variable as well as other social factors and individual factors in the model. The inclusion of pertinent variables such as system factors, self-efficacy, and trust make a difference to original Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in this chapter. Findings show that systems, self-efficacy in an individual, and word of mouth in social situations play important roles in the use of ICT by MPs to engage their electorates when these variables are moderated with trust in ICT.
TopIntroduction
Nowadays the adoption of ICT is not only peculiar with the private organization but has extensively been used in the public institutions. Public agencies and governmental bodies such as elected officers or politicians have begun to envisage the importance of ICT usage in their related duties and work being assigned to them. In other words, the parliamentarians have seen the needs to embrace the ICT revolution. As a matter of fact, the implementation and adoption of the new technologies in the Malaysian parliamentary system has become one of the most pressing agenda since 1994 in order to improve the responsiveness and efficiency of transaction between government as whole, the elected politicians or member of parliaments (MPs) and their engagement with their respective constituent members. The main objective of adopting ICT in Parliament is to harness the opportunities for improving the people representation and their engagement with the parliamentary elected officers. In addition, it was sought that adoption and usage of ICT for parliamentary communication would enable the members of parliament either from the house of representative or senate establish a direct contact with the public and their participation in the legislative process will be assured. Hence, with the advent of the Internet, ICTs has become more than just enabling tool but also an efficient and rational internal operational mechanism for effective parliamentary system. The Internet as a new tool of communication to reach out the citizens has a power to transform the relationship between the members of the parliament and the general masses and to enable different parts of a society to be involved in the process of policy formulations as well as to establish a closer rapport between the parliament and the public (Sobaci, 2011). Through the use and adoption of ICT policy in the Malaysian parliament, the basic values envisaged by the government such transparency, accessibility, accountability, and effective representativeness can be achieved. Most of the parliaments around the world are geared towards supporting the entire fundamental and these basic values (Thierry, 2009). The implementation of ICT in the Malaysian parliament can strengthen human and institutional capacity and promote effective democracy through a constant harnessing of ICT as enabling tool. Above all, the ICT adoption can enhance development and inter-parliamentary communications for better service delivery and meeting the challenging demands by electorates in diverse constituencies around Malaysia.