E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies

As internet technologies rapidly matured and found increasingly important in public’s daily life. The question to implement electronic government (E-government) by most of the countries is increasing due to its potential and positive impacts carrying towards the developed countries. Nevertheless, the complexity surrounding this implementation of E-government is similar in every corner of the world. As the challenging arising from the implementation of E-government are broad, Malaysia is now focusing on MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) which is a huge technology park that is considered crucial for Malaysia to achieve a knowledge based economy.

The driving forces for the implementation of E-government in Malaysia are related to the strategic importance and focus on reinventing the government machinery and achieving the ultimate vision 2020; developing multimedia industries and attracting foreign investments, especially expertise and technologies. The overall progress of the execution of e-government in this country matches the label of the “Silver Medalists” category which indicates that the policies to implement e-government are in place although there are highly visible governments Websites, many of them are in the test phase.

Besides there are clear policies and strategic projects of e-government for the G2C, G2B, and G2G dimensions. However, many of these projects are still on the very surface or experimentation and implemented in phases which mostly in the urban areas and certain states such as Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and others. Thus, there is still much room for improvement in terms of the overall achievement of e-government in Malaysia where in the case that, G2C dimensions, the actual usage of the services by the citizens is minimal.

The most important factor that drives the implementation of e-government services to another greater height is the satisfaction of customer. “give the people what they want” is the phrase that drives the adoption of online government services. As government executives focus on tailoring online services to meet the needs of specific customer segments, just as businesses do, e-government programs will be more successful and deliver greater returns on the investments.