اولویت بندی ترجیحات شهروندان در استفاده از خدمات موبایلی دولت: رویکرد فرآیند تحلیل سلسله مراتبی (AHP) Prioritization of citizens’ preferences for using mobile government services: the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach

Introduction Information and communication technology (ICT) improves collaboration between citizens, the government, and service providers through the expansion of technology in providing services and fastening the communication (Alotaibi&Roussinov, 2015; Mengistu& Rho, 2009; Sharma, 2015). One of the emergent technologies is electronic government (egovernment), which is a technological innovation developed by governmental initiatives that improves and provides equitable access to government services for citizens through wired connection (Alomari, Sandhu& Woods, 2014). Despite the number of e-government initiatives, e-government failed to consider the high penetration of mobile users through wireless technology when providing its public services to the citizens through mobile devices (Abu-Shanab & Haider, 2015). In order to overcome the limitations of e-government, mobile government (m-government) can be considered the next inevitable direction of the evolution of e-government initiatives (Amailef & Lu, 2011). M-government enables the government to provide public services through mobile devices depending on the availability of wireless technology in order to improve the level of interaction with its citizens and to provide high-quality services (Abaza &Saif, 2015; Abdelghaffar & Magdy, 2012). One of the greatest advantages of m-government services is the opportunity to provide public services for citizens from any place and at any time (AbuShanab & Haider, 2015), along with other advantages, such as accessibility, user proximity, real-time information exchange, and immediacy of messages (Vincent & Harris, 2008). As a completely alternative way of providing public services through mobile devices, mgovernment has been accepted in several countries around the world to deliver services to the citizenry with impressive efficiency and effectiveness (Shareef, Dwivedi, Stamati& Williams, 2014). As an area of particular focus in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the UAE was ranked number one by the United Nation’s (UN’s) e-smart services index in 2016—the index used to evaluate the performance of e-government and m-government services around the world—amongst all the GCC states for providing the most e-government and m-government services to citizens (Innovation and tech, 2016). Thus, the UAE offered 89.13% of its government services through electronic and mobile portals, followed by Bahrain with 82.61%, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Qatar with 67.39%, Kuwait with 65.22%, and Oman with 59.42%. Even with the success of implementing m-government services on mobile platforms, m-government will not achieve long-term success and constancy of use until it meets citizens’ requirements (Carroll, 2005). Alssbaiheen and Love (2015) and Ishmatova (2007) argued that the citizens’ potential preferences depend on the critical factors for the success of m-government. The current understanding of what preferable factors drive citizens to use m-government services is limited (Abaza & Saif, 2015). In order to develop citizen-centered m-government services that provide citizens with immediate accessibility, relevant information, and highquality services, m-government developers should understand the citizens’ preference factors for using m-government services (Shareef, Archer &Dwivedi, 2012).