Chapter 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Chapter 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Introduction In this chapter, the researcher explains the research process executed during the research on citizen adoption towards eGovernance services. The researcher had outlined the research strategy, research methods, developed instruments for collecting the data and data analysis. The Researcher has also mentioned the limitations of the research. 3.2 Problem Definition Worldwide nations are executing appreciable efforts and spending substantial funds for making eGovernance successful. Various schemes and programs are initiated and implemented from time to time. Specifically, in the case of Indian environment since last decade many citizen centric services like online Birth certificate, Caste certificate, Land Records and passport services are being offered through implementation of eGovernance. Digital India flagship program was given a new path to Indian eGovernance and further enhanced in the form of eKranti. eKranti offers eservices to the citizen of India. The Indian eGovernance is also looking forward towards citizen participation and the main objective of Digital India is to transform Governance to transformational Governance and not just transactional. The three visionary areas have been defined under Digital India as: • Digital Infrastructure as core utility to every citizen • Governance and services on demand • Digital empowerment to citizens The government is making efforts to fulfil these visionary areas by establishing the required infrastructure and by providing various citizen centric services. Various early harvest programs were also announced. ‘mgov.in’ is an attempt for participatory government. But it is an elementary level step towards citizen participation in eGovernance. To know the eReadiness of any country, there is a necessity to understand the circumstances in terms of population and literacy and cultural background of the country. 99 India is a country with a multilingual, multicultural society. It is the 7 th largest country with an area of around 3,287,263 Square kilometres.(1) India is having the world’s second largest population of 121.01crores (2011Census). (8) There are 22 different languages that have been recognized by the Constitution of India and uses English for official purposes. The literacy rate in the Country stands at 74.04%, 82.14% for male and 65.46% for female. Nearly 67% population of India lives in rural areas and 33% of the population lives in urban areas. (1) According to the Modified Mixed Reference Period (MMRP) concept proposed by the World Bank in 2015, India's poverty rate for period 2011-12 stood at 12.4% of the total population. India has a significant problem of poverty, despite being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. According to the World Bank revised methodology, India has the third highest number of people living in extreme poverty after Nigeria and Congo (status as on January 2019). (7) Indian living conditions resemble the two sides of the coin. On the one side, some percentage of the population are rich and having all the resources, highly educated and on the other side, people who are very poor and not having any resources. Infrastructure facilities were not established in full-fledged manner. Digital divide, cultural divide exists in the country. Given the above background, following were the concerns: Are targeted citizens getting all the benefits of the eGovernance services? Are the efforts of the eGovernance services spreading till the last mile? Even though some services are available in the form of mobile governance, is all the citizens are able to afford and to adopt eservices provided by the Government? Will they able to participate in the digital governance? Is all the category of the citizen are willingly adopting eGovernance? Are the citizens aware of these services and its usefulness? Before talking about the adoption of eGovernance, Will all the areas of the society be aware of eGovernance services? There is a gap between the demand and supply side of eGovernance. What is the root cause for the gap between serving and consuming and how it can be filled? 100 How to improve this adoption levels in the citizen for smooth and successful eGovernance implementation which will give a good return to the government efforts? After observing the above-mentioned points, it is imperative to research citizen adoption towards these eGovernance services and find the root cause and solution for this problem. 3.3 Importance of this study In the previous chapter, the literature review was done on eGovernance, citizen perceptions, adoptions and the importance of timely and continuous assessment of eGovernance services. The Study was also conducted on various policies and standards that were in place. The entire literature review was done by categorizing the topics into People, Process and Policies. During the initial sections, various technology acceptance models, their implementations in eGovernance were discussed. The next sections were dealt with various frameworks to assess the processes and their importance. Out of previous experiences and through the literature study, the researcher was found many factors to assess the adoption levels. There were various studies about assessing and impact of eGovernance. But only few studies were existing on citizen adoption of eGovernance. Several studies made by various researchers on technology adoption and some researchers have implemented those models in their studies on internet adoption, internet shopping adoption and also in eGovernance services adoptions. But these researches had limited scope and confined to some services. Comparatively less research happened in countries with multicultural, multilingual and multi climatic conditions like India. Secondly, very little research happened from the consumer side. For increasing citizen adoption towards eGovernance services, it is not enough to find the mechanisms to increase the citizen’s adoption levels. For increase in the adoption, balancing efforts are needed on both provider and consumer side. Only service quality or perceived usefulness will not give 100% results. Even though technology can be the backbone in eGovernance implementation, but we can’t ignore the management side of technology and service delivery to the citizens as 101 in this scenario, the main stakeholder is the citizen. As citizen is a consumer of eservices provided by the government, it will resemble the model of customer and the company scenario. It is very much essential to treat a citizen who is a consumer of service as a customer of product. There are lot of resemblances in both the scenarios. In market research, it is very important to examine ground level realities before launching any new product and also it is very much necessary to assess and improve the product to sustain the market for that product for a long time. Various researches will be conducted in case of market research for all and almost all products to understand the insights of customer responsiveness and loyalty and to improve the market scope. One major difference in both these scenarios is the outcome (Success/failure) of the service. For the Market, money is the main term to success, but in eGovernance, the Government measures the outcome in terms of citizen satisfaction and thereby eDemocracy but profit will not be in terms of the money. Provision and consumption of eservices is not the only goal of the Government especially under Digital India, but the main objective is knowledge economy and eservice to all. So, it is more important to know the citizen adoption and thereby increase the adoption by framing some methods. Much of the research need to be conducted in the area of understanding the ground realities of eGovernance and the measures to increase the adoption levels of the same. 3.4 Objectives 1. To identify and study various factors for citizen adoption towards eGovernance services. There are various factors that will affect the citizen adoption towards eGovernance services. Previous works of literature were showing a path to improve citizen adoption in multiple ways. Theories like Diffusion innovation and models like TAM, UTAUT were defined many factors to diffuse the innovation and acceptance of new technology in the society. Some pieces of literature were emphasized on the service quality and assessment of services. The Researcher had an opinion that balancing efforts are needed from both provider and consumer side for increasing adoption in the citizens and it is not enough if some assessment mechanisms were identified to increase the service 102 quality or service availability. Only service quality or perceived usefulness will not give 100% results. There are many more factors required for successful adoption. There is a necessity to formulate a concept for successful eGovernance adoption by citizen. 2. To analyse and propose the concept to escalate the citizen adoption towards existing citizen centric applications. The Researcher identified some of the implemented eGovernance services, five each from both Educational and Health eGovernance services. An Instrument in the form of a questionnaire was prepared based on the proposed 4A concept which is identified by qualitative research. The instrument was divided into three sections. Section A contains demographic information and the awareness and availability of mobiles and computers. Section B contains the awareness and experiences of the user on the identified services. Section C was the opinion

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