Evolution of Electronic and Mobile Business and Services

Mobile business and services are playing an increasingly significant role in economic activity for nations. However, one of the prerequisites for successful electronic business activity is to have practical and acceptable mechanisms to conduct electronic transactions. In this paper, the authors identify weaknesses in the mobile and electronic payments markets, namely hyper-competition that results in too much variation and lack of standards. The paper gains insights from previous works on the government and money nexus. The relationship between governments and money has continued to evolve. The current global and electronic environment now presents fresh challenges for the state, as payments extend across national jurisdictions and deal with new types of services and transactions. The paper provides the basis for developing theory to fully capture and recognise the development of mobility in an electronic and global market space and by identifying practical ways governments can support the evolving mobile payments industry.

Understanding Shared Services

In a competitive environment, companies continuously innovate to offer superior services at lower costs. ‘Shared Services’ have been extensively adopted in practice as a means for improving organizational performance. Shared Services are considered most appropriate for support functions and are widely adopted in human resource management, finance and accounting, and more recently employed as an information systems (IS) function. As computer-based corporate information systems have become de facto and the backbone of administrative systems, the technical impediments to sharing have come down dramatically. As this trend continues, CIOs and IT professionals need a deeper understanding of the Shared Services phenomenon. Yet, analysis of IS academic literature reveals that Shared Services, though mentioned in more than 100 articles, has received little in depth attention. This paper investigates the current status of Shared Services in IS literature. The authors present a detailed review of literature from main IS journals and conferences. The paper concludes with a tentative operational definition, a list of perceived main objectives of Shared Services, and an agenda for related future research.

Examining the Role of Stakeholder’s in Adopting Enterprise Application Integration Technologies in Local Government Domain

The realisation of innovative technological transformation in providing electronic services (e-Services) has often been associated with the presence of a number of prime stakeholders who perform their requisite functions in the organisation. In context of this research, the authors examine the potential role of key stakeholders involved in the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) adoption process. Literature exemplifies that EAI technologies are large, comprehensive solutions that are complex to adopt and manage. Similar to adopting other technologies, there are several stakeholders involved with adopting EAI solutions, each with specific domain knowledge and expertise that are crucial to the success of EAI projects. In this regard, it would be judicious to give greater contemplation to research examining the role of stakeholders in the EAI adoption process in Local Government Authorities (LGAs). This paper applies concepts of the stakeholder theory to analyse the importance of stakeholders during the EAI adoption process with regards to EAI adoption factors. To conduct this research, the authors follow a qualitative multiple case study approach. Empirical findings highlight that each stakeholder involved in the EAI adoption process has a significant role utilising their expertise by contributing towards the success of EAI projects.

M-Government for Education

The main challenges of studying user preferences are related to user uncertainty related to a lack of previous experience with m-Government services. This paper investigates user preferences for potential mobile campus services. It was conducted as a pilot survey with the goal to develop and test a measurement approach for revealing preferences for services that users haven’t yet experienced. The dataset used in this paper is taken from a contingent ranking survey carried out in February 2008, involving purposive sampling of third year university students pursuing a bachelor’s degree at the Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University. Numerical estimations reflecting the importance of services and content features were derived using ASPID-methodology (Analysis and Synthesis of Parameters under Information Deficiency), the main advantage of which lies in its ability to work accurately with different types of uncertain information on weight-coefficients.

SMS Banking

Mobile banking is a mobile service that allows the user to perform banking transactions using a mobile handheld device and a mobile service known as short text messaging (SMS). Deploying an expanded Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this study aims to identify the factors that influence the customer’s decision to use SMS banking. Findings from relevant literature and outcomes of the analysis of qualitative data were gathered through focus group discussions to build a model, and a survey was conducted to explore the model with respect to individuals’ behaviour when considering using SMS banking. Findings show that service quality, as well as the degree of customers’ awareness about the service, influence participants’ perceptions about the usefulness of SMS banking and their intentions to use and adopt the service in the future.

Determinants of Goal-Directed Mobile Ticketing Service Adoption Among Internet Users

This study aims to understand the driving factors that influence the attitudes and behavioral intention to adopt mobile ticketing services, a new mobile Internet service in Taiwan applying the Theory of Planned Behavior. Empirical findings suggest that the intention to adopt the mobile ticketing service is significantly affected by the attitude towards the service, as well as the self-efficacy and controllability of adopting the mobile ticketing service. Attitude towards using the mobile ticketing service is significantly influenced by perceived usefulness and perceived monetary value of the service, whereas perceived usefulness is significantly affected by the perceived ease of use of the mobile ticketing service. Implications of this study and directions for future research are discussed.

Activity-Based Costing in Public Administrations

The traditional way of budgeting in public administrations is input-oriented; however, this system does not meet actual methods of efficient budget controlling as a mapping of output parameters. Due to challenges, such as the need for cost reduction because of decreasing tax revenues, pressure for controlling mechanisms is rising. Furthermore, Europe Pan-European directives foster process harmonization and introduction of IT-supported and optimized business processes in the public sector. In this regard, activity-based costing can be a useful instrument for efficiency measurement of public administrations output. Through the introduction of new public management and double-entry accounting public administrations, the opportunity to use cost-centered accounting mechanisms to assess process performance while evaluating their activities in a holistic concept is accomplished. Process modeling can be a useful instrument to help public administrations to capture relevant process knowledge and thus create the data basis for activity-based costing.

Analysis of Mobile Users’ Perception Towards SMS Voting

The objective of this study is to study the characteristics of SMS voting adopters in terms of demographic factors as well as to explore the mobile users’ perception towards SMS voting. A survey using questionnaires was conducted to gain information and opinions from a convenience sample of 300 Malaysian mobile users regarding their perceptions on using SMS to vote. The findings revealed that approximately two-thirds of Malay respondents use SMS voting. The study’s findings reveal that most mobile users in the sample are single and female, and that mobile users like to send their votes using SMS. There is a significant difference between the usages of SMS voting among female respondents. Out of the total respondents, 80 percent perceived that the ease of use factor greatly influences mobile users in using SMS for voting purposes.

Investigating the Landscape in National Interoperability Frameworks

Openness, accountability, and transparency have attracted researchers’ and practitioners’ interest as open data and citizen engagement initiatives try to capitalize the wisdom of crowds for better governance, policy making, or even service provision. In this context, interoperability between public organizations, citizens, and enterprises seems to remain the center of interest in the public sector and national interoperability frameworks are continually revised and expanded across the globe in an effort to support the increasing need for seamless exchange of information. This paper outlines the current landscape in eGovernment interoperability, analyzing and comparing frameworks that have reached a certain degree of maturity. Their strengths and weaknesses at conceptual and implementation level are discussed together with directions for reaching consensus and aligning interoperability guidelines at a country and cross-country level.

Enhancing Complaint and Problem Management

M-government is an emergent area for mobile applications, where citizens and organizations can interact with government and municipal agencies through mobile devices. One promising area for m-government is complaint and problem management, where mobile applications using the integrated functions of a cellular telephone can offer citizens convenient ways of rapidly reporting problems. The problems reported can then be effectively managed by the municipality using state-of-the-art workflow techniques. Furthermore, the municipality can inform citizens and companies of problems already reported or addressed, which can be visualized through interactive maps. In this study, a municipal e-service for complaint and problem management is transformed into an m-service and put into operation in a Swedish municipality. The experiences from developing the m-service comprise of a suggested design and several identified challenges. Suggestions for future research include the application of new technologies for positioning and the adaptation of the m-service to new cellular telephone models.