Evaluation of eGovernment websites usability in Jordan
[Thesis]
Al Fawwaz, Bader Methqal
Garaj, V. ; Balachandran, W.
Brunel University
2012
Thesis (Ph.D.)
2012
In the Information and Communications Technology era, eGovernment projects present a great opportunity for governments to offer better and quicker services to their users from the public. However, the success and the failure of these projects to achieve the expected goals depend heavily on some important aspects, mainly websites usability. The research in this thesis focuses on the usability of eGovernment websites in Jordan as a case study, as it is one of the developing countries facing problems due to websites usability. Hence, the main aim of the research was to investigate the situation of the Jordanian eGovernment websites with a view to improving usability, as well as to propose a roadmap to reinforce websites usability in order to achieve better utilisation and a more successful eGovernment project in Jordan. This research work achievement and major contributions have been accomplished through three stages; the first stage investigated the level of usability of eGovernment in Jordan from a manager‟s perspective. The study for this stage involved a sample of 37 managers who are in charge of managing and maintaining eGovernment projects in Jordan. The research revealed that the main problems undermining Jordanian eGovernment usability are the lack of the general usability awareness amongst management, the lack of clear usability standards and guidelines, the insufficient level of end-user involvement in the process of design and maintenance of eGovernment services, limited budgets and the lack of expert web-designers. The second stage was to build a clear overview about the status of eGovernment websites usability in Jordan by investigating main aspects related to design that affect the success of eGovernment websites in Jordan from an end-user‟s perspective. The study for this stage involved 155 participants for testing five Jordanian eGovernment websites. It was revealed that the Jordanian eGovernment websites generally do not have a high level of usability, and that there is a lack of understanding of the needs and requirements of the end-users. In addition, the study discovered a lack of testing and monitoring of the websites, a lack of involvement of end-users, poor collaboration and coordination among government agencies, poor standardisation, and lack of trust/satisfaction. The outcome from the early mentioned studies was used in the third stage, which has been used to establish the model to improve the usability of eGovernment websites in Jordan through a clear roadmap. The model has four components: website manager and designer, end-users, usability committee (advisory, executive), design process (usability requirements, pre-implementation test, post-implementation and maintenance). The model which was established and evaluated can be very beneficial for promoting eGovernment websites usability, in Jordan particularly and in other countries with similar backgrounds and situations.