Investigation about the citizen awareness and education status to implement E-government, Comparative study of the regions 1, 6, 8 of Mashhad Municipality

Introduction    E-government refers to public use of information technology, especially the internet in order to provide information and services to citizens. Realization of e-government in the country, requires participation of electronic citizens. To implement and promote effective e-government, essential infrastructure should be provided. The importance of e-government becomes clear when the citizens don’t have required awareness of the benefits and process of e-government and services and lack of training in the effective use of these services will result in the failure of the project. This research wants to examine the role of education and awareness of citizens in the implementation of e-government in Mashhad. E-government is the use of information and communication technologies to make changes in the process of governance through more accessible, more efficient, and more responsive management. A comprehensive model of e-government in developing countries is categorized into four dimensions of social, organizational, technological and political. Several studies have emphasized on the importance of social dimension to implement e-government in which the social dimension, education and awareness of citizens for the use of electronic services is regarded in this research . Methodology The research is applied by descriptive–survey method. Given the scope of the research, field survey took place in Mashhad, a questionnaire was used for data collection. The questionnaire is researcher-made and contains 41 questions in three domains of education, awareness and use of e-government services. In terms of the research variables, the questions are designed in two categories (Nominal Qualitative - two option and Sequential Qualitative- Likert). Statistic population is all citizens in three regions of Mashhad. The Sampling method is clustering in which three regions based on the income distribution are selected as representative of the whole population. For this purpose, zone 1 are considered as inclusive, zone 8 as mid-inclusive, zone 6 as less-inclusive. Using Morgan table, a sample size of 384 residents is estimated. To analyze the data, SPSS software is used. In this research we have used KMO index and Bartlett test to check the validity of the questions, Cronbach's alpha coefficient to measure the reliability of the questions, one-sample T-test to examine the current status of variables, multiple sample T-test and one-way ANOVA to compare mean of the societies, and LSD post hoc test to make more accurate comparison of differences between the regions. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire are approved after removing several items. Results and Discussion   Results of descriptive statistics showed that the average age of respondents was 34 years old and the majority of respondents (39%) were between the ages of 20-30 years. About 65% of the respondents were male and the rest were female. In terms of marital status 53% were married and 47% were unmarried. In terms of education most of the respondents (31%) were Diploma and after that the highest rate of education was related to BA course (28%). About 25% had 1-5 years of work experience and 22% had 15-11 years of the experience. Only 9% of people had high level of expertise, 32 percent were moderate and 46 percent of those have had low skills. Finally, 45% of the respondents were self-employed. Inferential results also showed that citizen’s awareness and training and also use of electronic services in Mashhad was under the average level. In this way, the average of the citizen education variable was 2.83, average of citizen awareness was 2.74 and the average of use of e-services was 2.70. The mean of education, awareness and use of electronic services in the study area showed that the current status of these three variables was different in three clustered areas of the research. Each of the three variables of training and awareness and use of electronic services had the highest rate in zone 1 and then zone 8. The zone 6 in comparison with the other areas had more undesirable situation. Among the regions, only Zone 1 was in average level or slightly above, zone 8 and specially zone 6 were far more than the average. Conclusion    The results indicated that zone 1 as a high income level is an inclusive region in which level of awareness, education and training and the use of e-services was close to average and more than the two other regions. Zone 8 as a mid-inclusive area in comparison with the inclusive region had unfavorable status but on the other hand it had better situation than the less-inclusive area. The zone 6 as a less inclusive area with low income level in terms of the three variables of awareness, education and the use of electronic services was in a more unfavorable situation than the two other districts. Therefore, it can be concluded that the areas with lower income levels have more unfavorable situation regarding the citizen training, awareness and their use of e-services. Supplementary questions also indicated that people with lower levels of education than those with higher education were more likely to participate in training courses of electronic services. Most of the respondents are between the ages of 20-30 years and have the potential for training, learning and use of e-services as well. The next part of the results indicated that most people with diploma or bachelor degree have higher level of education required to start the training and the possibility to have the willingness and interest to use the e-services. Therefore, with such a situation the availability of the prerequisite to train citizens, to enhance public training courses and also to facilitate the private sector to be active in citizen education in the use of electronic services will lead to increased use of electronic services. This eventually can help build a competent e-city.