E-Government in Malaysia: Its Implementation So Far and Citizen's Adoption Strategies

E-government - Malaysia

Various countries, including Malaysia, are implementing electronic government, generally known as ‘e-government’. The status of e-government implementation in Malaysia is widely discussed as to the potential of e-government implementation towards the public and businesses. The implementation of e-government started since the initiation of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) by the Malaysian government.

The e-government initiative launched the country into the Information Age. It will improve the government operates internally as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. It seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility, and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. Simultaneously, it will improve information flow and processes within the government, improve the speed and quality of policy development, and improve coordination and enforcement. This enabled the government to be more responsive to the needs of its citizens.

E-government is one of the seven flagship applications introduced in MSC. Under the e-government flagship, seven main projects were identified to be the core of the e-government applications.

The e-government projects are:
1. Project Monitoring System (PMS)
2. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)
3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)
4. Electronic Procurement (EP)
5. Electronic Services (E-Services)
6. Electronic Labor Exchange (ELX)
7. E-Syariah

The recent survey about e-government adoption in Malaysia, which was done by market information group TNS, indicated that the e-government use is growing but at a slow pace. As shown in the study, about 15% of Malaysians have used the internet to access online government services in year 2003 compared to 12% in year 2002. In the survey, Malaysia’s ranking is 25th out of 32 countries in terms of e-government usage growth. The Malaysians are also concerned about the security of doing transactions over the Internet and this resulted in low usage of e-government services. As far as the age group is concerned, the younger Malaysians who are under 34 are the primary users of e-government services. Also noted in the survey, households with high incomes and higher levels of education actively use the e-government services.

The implementation of e-government services will bring benefits to the public, businesses and the government itself. As for the public, saving time and money are the primary reasons to use the e-government implementation, the governments should market their offers, improve citizen’s awareness of the benefits and increase take-up of online services.

However, implementing a successful e-government project is not without any barriers during the process. Hence, adopting good strategies are crucial in order to overcome these barriers.

Four main barriers could affect Malaysia’s e-government implementation.
1. Legislative and Regulatory Barriers
2. Budgetary Framework
3. Lag Behind Technological Change
4. Digital Divide Impedes the Benefits of E-Government

Citizen’s adoption strategies

E-Government adoption is affected by website design elements that provide perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, by user characteristics such as sense of perceived risk, feeling of perceived control and prior Internet experience, and also by citizen satisfaction with the quality of its services.

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.

The government should be able to propose an effective strategy to encourage citizen’s adoption of e-government by focusing on these 4 areas.

Prevent from the e-auction fraud

Protecting against e-auction fraud

1. Verification
It is used to confirming the identity and evaluating the condition of an item. With verification, neutral third parties will evaluate and identify an item through a variety of means.

2 .Grading Service
E-auction site like e-bay will provide the grading service. Usually the grading service is done by the third party who is specialized in this field. By using this method, it can protect the buyers from the e-auction fraud. Some sellers will sell the fake antiques or maybe the bad quality antiques but the buyers will never know. So here comes the grading service. They will use the grading service on antiques, collectible stuff, and painting.

3. Feedback Forum
Buyers and sellers from the e-auction site will get benefit from this feedback forum. They can share their buying or selling experience in this forum. For example, when a buyer gets cheated by a seller, he can post his own experience in the feedback forum so that other buyers can beware of that seller. From the feedback forum, buyers can get to know who the trustful sellers are. It can reduce the possibility for e-auction fraud to happen.



4. Escrow Service
An escrow service is a licensed and regulated company that collects, holds, and sends a buyer's money to a seller according to instructions agreed on by both the buyer and seller. Typically, once the buyer receives and approves the item from the seller within an agreed time frame, the escrow service then sends the payment to the seller.



5. Nonpayment Punishment
E-bay has the nonpayment punishment. This is to protect the sellers against the buyers who didn’t pay for the products. For buyer who did not pay for the first time, they will send a warning mail to the certain buyer. Second warning will be given out if the buyer did not pay for the second time. Once the buyer did it again, his or her account will be suspended for 30 days. Lastly, termination of the account will be taken.

Review of Blooming Florist

Blooming Florist is an online store which sell flowers, fruit baskets, cookies, wines and so on. In the homepage of Blooming Florist, there are many products listed there.

This will be convenient to their customers. Besides that, people who first time visit their website can easily know what Blooming Florist is selling. On the other hand, customers who prefer touch n feel the products before purchase can visit to Blooming Florist’s physical store which is located in LG floor of Mid Valley.

On top of the page, we can see the Worldwide Delivery. Satisfaction Guaranteed. Customers can order things from Blooming Florist and send to friends or family who is in overseas. Furthermore, they focus on customer satisfaction. So, Blooming Florist will delivery products to customers on time. Blooming Florist is same like other e-commerce site. We can found that they did provide the

Shopping cart – An order-processing technology that allows customer to accumulate items they wish to buy while they continue to shop. For the Blooming Florist their shopping cart is allocated at the right top corner.

Search engine – A computer program that can access a database of Internet resources, search for specific information or keywords, and report the results. Customers can search the products by using the search engine. At the left top corner, we can found the products search of Blooming Florist.

Online catalog – Blooming Florist is using the static catalog which is a simple list written in HTML that appears on a Web page or series of Web pages.

E-payment system – Blooming Florist provide the e-payment service. Their customers can make the payment online for example using the credit cards.

Related Link

http://www.blooming.com.my/blooming/

Corporate Blogging : A new marketing communication tool for companies

What is corporate blog?

A corporate blog 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.

There are few types of corporate blog which is internal blogs, external blogs and CEO Blogs.

Internal blog

Internal blog is a weblog which generally accessed through the corporation’s Intranet and any of the employees can view. Anyone can post their own comment in that blog. The informal nature of blogs may encourage:

• employee participation
• free discussion of issues
• collective intelligence
• direct communication between various layers of an organization
• a sense of community

External blog

An 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.

External corporate blogs, by their very nature, are biased, though they can also offer a more honest and direct view than traditional communication channels. Nevertheless, they remain public relations tools.

Certain corporate blogs have a very high number of subscribers. The official Google Blog is currently in the Technorati top 50 listing among all blogs worldwide.

Marketers might expect to have product evangelists or influencers among the audience of an external blog. Once they find them, they may treat them like VIPs, asking them for feedback on exclusive previews, product testing, marketing plans, customer services audits, etc.

The business blog can provide additional value by adding a level of credibility that is often unobtainable from a standard corporate site. The informality and increased timeliness of information posted to blogs assists with increasing transparency and accessibility in the corporate image. Business blogs can interact with a target market on a more personal level while building link credibility that can ultimately be tied back to the corporate site.

CEO Blog

Blogging among CEOs.

What are the Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Reach more employees with a single message
• Be more accessible
• Create a searchable archive of thoughts and ideas
• Employees' questions and feedback will be permanently recorded on a blog

Cons:

• Need to master a new style of communicating
• Creates an expectation that you will post regularly
• Puts the CEO “out there” and writing ability and though process will be scrutinized—at least initially
• The writing can be difficult unless the CEO loves to write (in which case this becomes a positive)

Related Link
http://www.corporateblogging.info/

Credit Card Debts: Causes and Prevention

Causes of Credit Card Debts

1. Poor Planning and Overspending
Unexpected occurrences bring unexpected expenses. Despite careful budgeting, expenses that were never planned on can arise and cause people are incapable of paying for monthly bills. Some common examples of such unexpected expenses are property damage caused by catastrophic weather events, appliances that just stop working, and pricey car repairs. These and other similar things can greatly affect your ability to work at eradicating debt. Other than that, there is one common overspending phenomenon that happened frequently especially on people who likes to shop during sales and price cutting events by shopping malls. Shopaholics are among the people who are unable to withstand the attraction of price cut. They always shop without considering their needs and wants on the product and this behavior is known as impulse buying. Thus, impulse buying may lead to overspending and then credit card debts.

2. Lack of Savings
Research shows that majority of credit card debts caused by not saving enough. With sufficient savings, people will unlikely having financial problem. While not all financial woes can be completely avoided, they can indeed be made easier to deal with by being able to rely on savings to help in the case of an emergency. Sadly, many people do not see the importance of adding monthly savings to a budget. Doing so, however, is essential to successful management of debt.

3. Unexpected events
Unexpected events may cause credit card debts. For instance, jobs get lost. Due to outsourcing and downsizing on mass levels by large companies, many people have found themselves suddenly jobless. Such an unexpected change financially can cause serious money problems, including the inability to pay off debt.

4. Health Problems
Credit card debts can be related to health problems. A host of debilitating illnesses can leave their victims without the ability to work, as do many accidents. Because of having medical expenses but not having an income, putting money towards the elimination of debt on a monthly basis becomes very difficult to arrange.

Credit Card Debts Prevention

1. Budgeting
Create a budget and stick to it. A clear budget that includes all of your monthly bills, food, entertainment and miscellaneous items will prevent you from spending thoughtlessly and buying on impulse.

2. Review financial records
Maintain clear financial records and a regular payment schedule. Disorganization can cause you to overlook bills and overestimate how much you have to spend. Dedicate a specific time every month (just after payday is best) when you can sit down with your finances, pay your bills and determine how much you have to spend for the month ahead.

3. Limit the use of credit card
Only use credit when you can pay it off within a few months. Using credit cards with no plan to pay the debt is reckless, irresponsible and can get you into big trouble. The longer it takes you to pay off the debt, the more interest that debt will incur--and the more you'll end up paying.

4. Limit the amount of credit card
Shred or tear up credit card applications that come to you in the mail. Just because you get the application doesn't mean you need or want the card. Destroying the application will prevent you from using it and protect you from potential identity thieves.

5. Make saving as a habit
Save for a rainy day. Direct a portion of your paycheck directly into your savings account so you never even see that money. Aim to save enough money to be able to pay your bills for 6 months in case you lose your job or have an accident.

6. Maintain insurance coverage
Health and home insurance are absolute musts in order to avoid debts. Unexpected medical bills, flood damage and fire damage can lead to ruin if you aren't properly covered.

Mobile Money Payment System in Malaysia

Neowave Mobile Money (MM Wallet)

Mobile Money is a PIN-based Mobile Payment Solution to address the limitations and bottlenecks created by cash, cheques and credit cards. It unlocks the power of the mobile phone to make payments, allowing registered users to pay for goods and services at anytime, anywhere using only a mobile phone coupled with a 6-digit security PIN (Personal Identification Number) via SMS (Short Messaging Service). This gives the freedom to shoppers to buy products online and pay the merchant using his/her mobile phone without being physically present at the store.

Mobile Money will encourage more consumers to shop online. This will definitely be a great boon to the e-commerce industry in Malaysia. It will surely encourage more merchants to adopt online selling as an extra sales channel which complement perfectly with their offline sales channel to help them sell more of their goods and services. Realizing these needs of merchants in Malaysia, Neowave is the 1'st shopping cart software provider who has integrated Mobile Money as a payment method in their webShaper e-commerce software. This feature allows merchants to accept payment via Mobile Money and process the payment in real time within clicks.

In order to pay using Mobile Money, a shopper must have a savings, current or credit card account with participating banks. It functions like a Credit Card if a shopper applies for a "Pay by Mobile Phone" credit card account (eg Hong Leong Mobile Credit Card). The shopper will be billed by the bank accordinly by month's end. In addition, it functions as a Debit Card if it is tied to shopper's savings or current account. The amount will be deducated instantly from the account upon successful transaction.

How Mobile Money Works?

1. Customer That Purchase Online from an E-commerce Website

2. Pay by Mobile Phone Number
(Applies to customer purchase from merchant's brick-and-mortar store or Remote Payment)

1. Customers choose to pay via Mobile Money for the goods and services from participating merchants.

Customer gives merchant his/her mobile number via phone, fax, email etc.

2. Merchant can bill the customer via IVR, Mobile Money website or SMS. When merchant requests for payment with customer's mobile number, Mobile Money sends an SMS with a Bill Reference Number to customer requesting customer to to reply with their 6-Digit Security PIN to approve the payment.

3. Customer authorizes payment by replying the SMS with the Bill Reference Number and customer's 6-digit SECURITY PIN.

Mobile Money authenticates customer's SECURITY PIN and requests for bank approval on transaction.

(In this illustration, 001 is the Bill Reference Number while 123456 is the security PIN. In simpler terms, 001 means it is the 1'st SMS request for payment, 002 means the 2'nd, 003 means the 3'rd and the number increases. )

4. upon receipt of bank's confirmation to debit customer's mobile credit account or mobile Debit account, Mobile Money will send a payment notification with details to merchant as well as customer.

5. Merchant can deliver the goods / services.

Related Link
http://www.neowave.com.my/mobilemoney_overview.asp

The Application of Prepaid Cash Card for Consumers

Touch ‘n Go
Touch ‘n Go is a prepaid smartcard that uses Mifare contactless technology. Mifare is the international de facto standard for contactless smartcard. Information contain in this card can be read and written via magnetic induction using specified radio frequency and smartcard software.

Touch ‘n Go card is an electronic purse that can be used at all highways in Malaysia, major public transports in Klang Valley, selected parking sites and theme park. Touch ‘n Go uses contactless smartcard technology. The card looks similar to a credit card. User can continue using the card as long as it is pre-loaded with electronic cash.

User can reload the card at toll plazas, train stations, Automated Teller Machines, Cash Deposit Machines, Petrol kiosks and at authorised third party outlets. Reload denomination is ranging from RM20 to RM500. Touch ‘n Go enhances the speed of paying for low value but high frequency transactions. Apart from the speed, it is also very convenient because user no longer need to prepare for small change or wait in queue at the cash lane to complete the transaction.

EZ-LINK
Same as Touch-n-Go, EZ-Link is prepaid card in Singapore.

The EZ-Link card is a contactless smartcard based on Sony's FeliCa smartcard technology, used for payments in Singapore especially for transportation in Singapore . Established in 2001, it was promoted as a means for faster travel due to speedier boarding times on buses.

The card is commonly used in Singapore as a smartcard for paying transportation fees in the city-state's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT), Light Rapid Transit (LRT) and public bus services. The card also serves as a supplementary identification and concession card for students in nationally recognised educational institutes, full-time national service personnel serving in the Singapore Armed Forces, Singapore Civil Defence Force and Singapore Police Force or senior citizens who are over sixty years old.

The system has since been expanded, with EZ-Link cards being used for payments in Singapore branches of McDonald's, food centres, supermarkets and libraries, and even soft drink purchases from vending machines. Some schools in Singapore have also started to adopt the EZ-Link card as a way to mark the attendance of students and to pay for food served within the school campus.

On December 3, 2005, EZ-Link Pte Ltd announced that it was working with NETS to create a new hybrid card which will have the functions of both the EZ-Link card and the CashCard. This card would make it possible for one card to be used for payment on three popular modes of land transport in Singapore — ERP, bus and MRT. Work on this card was expected to be completed in 2007, but as of 2008, the card has not yet been released. On 17 October 2007, Starhub and EZ-Link Pte Ltd declared the start of a 6-month trial on phones with an embedded EZ-Link card.

Related Link
http://www.touchngo.com.my/
http://www.ezlink.com.sg/