Analysis of cloud-based e-government services acceptance in Jordan: challenges and barriers

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that the Cloud Computing services have become a strategic direction for governments' IT work by the dawn of the third-millennium. The inevitability of this computing technology has been recognized not only in the developed countries like the UK, USA and Japan, but also in the developing countries like the Middle East region and Malaysia, who have launched migrations towards Cloud platforms for more flexible, open, and collaborative public services. In Jordan, the cloud-based e-government project has been deemed as one of the high priority areas for the government agencies. In spite of its phenomenal evolution, various governmental cloud-based services still facing adoption challenges of e-government projects like technological, human-aspects, social, and financial which need to be treated and considered carefully by any government agency contemplating its implementation. While there have been extensive efforts to investigate the e-government adoption from the citizens' perspective using different theories and models, none have paid adequate attention to the security issues. This paper explores the different perspectives of the extent in which these challenges inhibit the acceptance and use of cloud computing in Jordanian public sector. In addition to examining the effect of these challenges on the participants’ security perception. The empirical evidence provided a total of 220 valid responses to our online questionnaire from Jordanian citizens including IT- staff from different government sectors. Based on the data analysis some significant challenges were identified. The results can help the policy makers in the public sector to guide successful acceptance and adoption of cloud-based e-government services in Jordan.