Advancing Public Trust Relationships in Electronic Government: The Singapore E-Filing Journey

  • Authors:

  • Eric T. K. Lim;Chee-Wee Tan;Dianne Cyr;Shan L. Pan;Bo Xiao

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Innovation Management and Strategy, University of Groningen, 9747 AE Groningen, The Netherlands;Department of Innovation Management and Strategy, University of Groningen, 9747 AE Groningen, The Netherlands;Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, British Columbia V3T 0A3, Canada;Department of Information Systems, School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117417, Republic of Singapore;Department of Computer Science (Information Systems), Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

  • Venue:
  • Information Systems Research
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

E-governments have become an increasingly integral part of the virtual economic landscape. However, e-government systems have been plagued by an unsatisfactory, or even a decreasing, level of trust among citizen users. The political exclusivity and longstanding bureaucracy of governmental institutions have amplified the level of difficulty in gaining citizens' acceptance of e-government systems. Through the synthesis of trust-building processes with trust relational forms, we construct a multidimensional, integrated analytical framework to guide our investigation of how e-government systems can be structured to restore trust in citizen-government relationships. Specifically, the analytical framework identifies trust-building strategies (calculative-based, prediction-based, intentionality-based, capability-based, and transference-based trust) to be enacted for restoring public trust via e-government systems. Applying the analytical framework to the case of Singapore's Electronic Tax-Filing (E-Filing) system, we advance an e-government developmental model that yields both developmental prescriptions and technological specifications for the realization of these trust-building strategies. Further, we highlight the impact of sociopolitical climates on the speed of e-government maturity.