Abstract:
Information Communication Technology (ICT) has become a key factor to decide all
activities in society. It has changed the shape of organizations, societies, and services
across the world. According to that, information and communication technology for
public administration has led the way to e-government. It makes an easy platform for
citizens to find information effectively while saving its accuracy. Sri Lankan
government has introduced the “E- Sri Lanka National Development” project in the
year 2005 and the Sri Lanka government web portal was the central place of the same
implementation. The research was focused to identify the factors that are affecting
the usage of e-government services among citizens in Sri Lanka. The main objective
of the study was to identify the citizens’ current usage of e-government applications
in Sri Lanka.
The sample of the study includes internet users of Sri Lanka and the sample consisted
of 384 individuals. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been employed in
this research and data was gathered by distributing printed and online questionnaires.
The result of the study shows that usage of e-government service was not at a
satisfactory level and awareness of e-government service had a direct impact on its
usage. Moreover, lack of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating
conditions and citizens' attitudes also had a direct impact on the usage of e-government
services. The study was able to identify major challenges for citizen participation in egovernment
services such as the absence of proper awareness, trust, insufficient
infrastructure, information literacy skills, slow internet connections and attitude based
issues. In this context, the study proposes three types of suggestions which can be
categorized into citizens’ related suggestions, technical suggestions, and organization
related suggestions . E.g.: Conducting systematic awareness programs and workshops,
re-engineering e-government web portal, improve computer literacy skills and
improve service quality to build positive attitudes on e-government services.
Conclusively it was evident that e-government services can be further developed in the
context of Sri Lanka to get the maximum utilization among citizens.
