E-Government in Malaysia:Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

I believe most of you had been accessed to e-government website in Malaysia such as checking PMR result, National Service (NS) name list, summon, and others. This blog will going give u more information about e-government.

Definitions of e-government range from “the use of information technology to free
movement of information to overcome the physical bounds of traditional paper
and physical based systems”1 to “the use of technology to enhance the access to
and delivery of government services to benefit citizens, business partners and
employees.”

The implementation of e-goverment started since intiated of Multimedia Super Corridor(MSC)by the Malaysian government. Most of the e-government project implementations are are currently in progress.

Generic Office Enviroment(GOE)

Generic Office Enviroment (GOE) is introduce a fully intergrated, distributed and scalable office enviroment that leverages use of multimedia technology.This will enable efficient communication , allowing collaboration among all workers, and ensure the right information reaching right people in the right time.

Electronic Procurement (eP) Project

eP Project is to re-engineer, automate and transfrom current procurement system. The project will cover central contract, tender and direct purchase. Besides that, the use of eP will increase transparency, save time and money when encourage supplier to go electronic and join the K ecomomy.

Human Resource Management Information System( HRMIS)

HRMIS will provide a single interface for government employees to perform human resource function effectively and efficiency. In addition, it will help to standardize all human resource process for federal, states, statutory body, and local authority sevice. The objective of HRMIS is not just for record keeping but also privide transaction functions such as leave application, loan processing and selection of employee.

Project Monitoring System ( PMS )

t is one of the e-government projects that create mechanism to monitor project implementation throughout government agencies. It would provided platform to exchange ideas and demonstrate best practices in information management and communication services. It consists of Application Services, Data Services and Communication Services.

Electronic Services Directory ( eServices )

It is a pilot project that allows Malaysian to engage in transaction and utility payment such as telephone and electricity bill, police summons, Road and Transport Department ( RTD ) services. The eService is accessed via multi channel service delivery like the internet and kiosk machines. For example, Rilek services. It allows public members to access general information on outstanding summons via touch sreen infokiosk. Please log on to http://www.rilek.com.my/ for more information. Driver licensing and summons services is one of the deliverably phase for the eServices project.

Electronic Labor Exchange ( ELX )

This projects help to improve mobilisation of human resource optimize work force utilisation via syatematic matching of job seekers to job vacancies. So, Ministry of Human Resource is to be a one-stop centre that contains labor market information accessible to the public.

Citizen’s adoption strategies

1. Customer satisfaction

E-Government adoption requires that citizens show higher levels of satisfaction with the online service provided by the government. A higher level of customer satisfaction will increase the rate of e-Government adoption.

2. Service Quality

Online service quality for e-Government could be measured in terms of quality of content provided on the website, the speed of the response to the citizens concerns with problem solving approach, and the availability of names. Other important measurement factors are telephone and fax numbers of personnel with whom citizens might need to get in touch, and the integration of an offline channel with online channel so that citizens could interact with government departments through other means if necessary. Higher quality of service will lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction and thus can increase the use of e-government services.

3. Website Design

Personalization of websites, customization of product offerings, and self-care are the three key features that could be used not only to build relationship with the visitors, but also to enhance their experience. These features give visitors a sense of control and participation and could potentially enhance their adoption

4. User Characteristic

User characteristics such as perceived risk, perceived control, and internet experience can have a direct impact on internet adoption. Experience influences a citizen’s trust of e-Government. Users with prior experience, especially if satisfied, would be more likely to return to use e-Government services. Perceived risk leads to security and privacy issues that could discourage the use of online services. It is important to ensure that citizens can transact online securely and their personal information will be kept confidential to increase the level of trust and the e-government adoption rate.

Review a local e-commerce site:NetBuilder

NetBuilder (M) Sdn. Bhd. is officially established in 1999, a rare Internet services provider who overlooks the Technology Bubble until the current pragmatic practice of E-commerce development.

They offer services such as:

Online Payment - Some companies in Malaysia are facing difficulties in receiving online payment because Malaysia has been blacklisted by several international major online payment providers. NetBuilder is dedicated to provide solution on receiving online payment for business. The services can be further categorized into two - local financial instituitions and international online payment provider (such as PayPal, WorldPay).

Website Development - They help to design website for various purposes for their clients. There are 3 type of packages offered: Weblite Package (for corporate or personal website); ECwebsite Package (for display or sell products online); and Portalwebsite Package (for online community and content-rich website).

Online Marketing - Netbuilder know-how on variety of the online marketing channels which can be applied in different industry and budget.

Besides that, NetBuilder also offers products like:
MyMall - This is an e-catalog and online shop. MyMall is currently FOC(Normally this system worth RM10,000+ on the market) as long as you are a subscriber of NetBuilder WebStation or WebPro Hosting package.
Xoops MyMall Module - A content management system.

Some of the recent projects by NetBuilder are Mobile Money, Nesh, IPS Corporate Advisory and many more. For more details, you can check out at their homepage, http://www.netbuilder.com.my/ or interested to read about their newsletter, click here.

Without a doubt, E-Commerce is playing an essential and huge impact in the changing technology environment. NetBuilder is definitely one of the many other sites that made it right through the market because of E-commerce advancement. Overall, NetBuilder is providing a good sight to their clients on the usage of the Internet to conduct business.

Corporate Blogging: A new marketing communication tool for companies

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_blog, corporate blog is "A corporate weblog is published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. The advantage of blogs is that posts and comments are easy to reach and follow due to centralized hosting and generally structured conversation threads. Currently, all major browsers (including Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer 7) support RSS technology, which enables readers to easily read recent posts without actually visiting the blog, which is very useful for low-volume blogs."

According to research of New PR Wiki, there was 58 (11.6%) of the Fortune 500 were blogging as of 17/5/2008. I just found out that a reasearch post by Mario Sundar in his blog, http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/top-15-corporate-blogs-ranked-may-2008/ is very interesting and should be recomend to my readers also. He stated the top 15 corporate blogs by the method measuring the popularity and the number of blogs vs. number of links that’s being measured. As my espectation, the first place is Google's blog and following by Adobe and Flickr. Facebook is also a blog that a lot of people visits and its rank is no. 4.

Actually, the corporate blog is not same as my blog now. My blog is to provide information about e-commerce to all my friends that interest in e-commerce but the corporate blog usually is used for the business purpose.

There are 3 types of blog which is internal, external and CEO blogs. Internal blog is accessed through the corporation's Intranet, is a weblog that any employee can view. It encourages the employees to participate in the blog and discuss everything including the work place, their jobs, the product and everything to increase the employees communication. External blog is a publicly available weblog where company employees, teams, or spokespersons share their views. It is often used to announce new products and services (or the end of old products), to explain and clarify policies, or to react on public criticism on certain issues. It also allows a window to the company culture and is often treated more informally than traditional press releases, though a corporate blog often tries to accomplish similar goals as press releases do. In some corporate blogs, all posts go through a review before they're posted. Some corporate blogs, but not all, allow comments to be made to the posts. This is the main part I wanted to discuss today. This external blog can be using as a marketing communication tool for the companies to promote their products, discuss and improve the products or even sell the products. The last is the CEO blog. As the name, we can easily know that, it is the blog which written by the CEO of particular company.

Here is an example of corporate blog, http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/default.aspx about dell. Readers can refer to this blog and get some idea about corporate blogging. Work hard on this, it is because corporate blogging will become a more and more important marketing tool for companies because it involve telling and also feedback of all the stakeholders of the company and it is really easy, fast and effective.

Things to take note to prevent e-auction fraud when a consumer participating in an e-auction.

Have you participated in electronic auction market?

The e-auction process is actually same with the traditonal auction, but it takes place through online. The virtual marketplace for trading between seller and buyer is provided by company, such as Ebay and Lelong.

Fraud exists everywhere, e-auction market is not the exception. However, i don't mean to discourage you from participating in e-auction, but i think we should try our maximum effort to prevent getting loss from e-auction fraud.

Here are some guidelines for you to prevent being cheated:

1) Use a secure payment system, if there is. For example, Lelong.com provides "Safetrade Services", it acts as an intermediary. This process begins when the buyer pays to the lelong.com, once received, they will inform seller to ship the goods to the buyer, the process end with ending money to the seller.

2) Trade with the verified seller only. Verified seller refer to those sellers had submitted complete details to the market place provider. It includes photocopy of MyCard, home phone number(will be called to verified). Thus the reliability of member is enhanced
Example: Process to become verified member

3) Know more about the sellers. You can try to track their trading history and check any feedback or rating about them from other members or previous buyers.

4) Don't simply bank in your money to anyone's bank. You have to be alert when the account's name is diffrerent from the seller name, or the race is different.

5) Dont Trade with the seller whose phone is not working. Those people are highly suspicious and so far most fraud cases fit into this category. They will stay anonymous until they receives your money and then disappear.

6) Don't trade with seller who is not responsive.

7) Get the seller's address. In case the goods is found faulty/spoil.

8) Be alert when the price is abnormally lower than market price. This is one of their tactics to attract you as you think you've found a good price.

For more information, you can refer to Lelong.com's security and protection and eBay's security centre.
Besides, you may also refer our post about Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods, it may give you some ideas about how to prevent fraud.