E-Services: a study on e-government websites in Myanmar

Abstract

A shift from traditional governance to e-governance, websites has become incomparable means for offering public information and services in new ways that can satisfy citizens’ needs and convenience. This paper is an attempt to review the e-Services through egovernment website in Myanmar from the perspective of citizens’ needs and benefits. Existing websites of different ministries and organization of Myanmar have been reviewed to study as what features they carry, what types of information and services they provided, what are the services that citizens wanted to get from e-government website, how the needs and expectations of the citizens can be met with government websites provided services, how to approach people centered services using social media and mobile application. For the purpose of the study, primary data are collected by using questionnaire survey and interview method. Compare survey result from officials and beneficiaries to know the difference between government provided e-services and citizens expected services. Then the findings from the primary data have been crossed verified with the benchmark of the “UN model of four stages of online service development” to have an assessment of e-services through e-Government website in general and the ministry level and some national level website in Myanmar. The overall level of online service development of Myanmar egovernment website is at the “Enhanced Information Services” stage of UN Model. This study comes up with some recommendations such as single login identity across all government website should be constructed as a National Government Portal, all of government ministries and department should use social media to disseminate information and also government website needed to modify it can be easily seen on smart phone, government provided e-services should compactable with mobile device that can be used independently of temporal and spatial restraints.