Senior government executives' use of the internet: A Bruneian scenario

Abstract

In gearing up the task of e-Government, the governments of the various economies are investing heavily in Information Technology (IT). The success of e-Government program therefore depends upon the IT literacy and skills of the senior government executives, especially in the use of the Internet. This study focuses on 100 senior government executives of the 10 different ministries of Brunei Darussalam. The results indicate that 70% of the senior executives have positive attitudes about the Internet. Results further show that 50% of these senior executives are in fact using the Internet and 66% of them are underutilizing the technology by just sending and receiving e-mails. The study further develops a normative model by using Davis's Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and by adding external variables. A Structural Equation Modelling technique is used to test the parsimony of the model. The final model has confirmed that external variables, PC self-efficacy and task variety contribute toward both the beliefs perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Only perceived ease of use contributes in determining the attitude that further predicts the Internet use of the senior government executives.