Understanding Trust in e-Government

Since the mid of 1990’s, information and communication technologies have influenced the society in a spectacular way, mainly because of the development of the Internet. The dependence on information technology has grown far beyond our expectations. Many institutions have recognized the advantages of this development and entered the digital highway. Governments worldwide have begun to recognize the potential opportunities offered by ICT to fit with citizens’ demands, and have started to introduce information and transactions online in what is now called e-Government. Regardless of how advanced is a country in terms of ICT infrastructure and deployment, many technical and non-technical obstacles must be faced in the adoption and dissemination of e-Government. Concerns about inadequate security and privacy safeguards in electronic networks can lead to distrust in applications of e-Government that might pose risks, such as through unwarranted access to sensitive personal information or vulnerability to online fraud or identity theft. Such concerns can be a major impediment to the take-up of e-Government services. This can also be affected by general trends in perceptions of trust in government, such as those caused by the attitude of a public administration to transparency and openness issues. In this context, many studies focusing on the citizen adoption of e-Government services suggest that trust, security and transparency are the major issues for egovernment adoption. In the present article the attention was directed on the relation between trust and egovernment. To fulfill this aim, an exploratory survey was undertaken with the goal to identify what factors could affect the citizens’ trust in e-government services. The findings indicated that citizen’s higher perception of technological and organisational trustworthiness, the quality and usefulness of e-Government services, the Internet experience and propensity to trust, directly enhanced the trust in e-Government. Age and privacy concerns have a negative influence over trust.