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Chapter 4. Pilot Analysis, Findings and Discussion Adoption, Diffusion and Use of E-government
Hassan Al-Zaabi Services in Abu Dhabi Police Force
As shown in the above tables, it is worth mentioning that education level and age of participants
differed between participants using and not using the e-services. For example, most participants not
using the e-services had a lower level of education, such as, below high school, high school and high
diploma. Furthermore, their age was also considered older than participants using the e-services.
It was also noticed that even users of e-services in this department use them very rarely, unlike other
departments who use them in daily basis. This is because most of them work in fields and not in
offices. An example of field work is to be involved in theft and crime scenes.
Most of participants (six out of ten) have less than one year internet experience for both personal use
and work purposes. This shows that staff members in this department are still new when it comes to
internet and e-services.
4.5.4.1 Relative Advantage
Relative advantage is defined earlier as “the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being better
than the idea it supersedes” (Rogers, 2003: 15).
Analysis with respect to relative advantage had led the researcher to examine two main themes. The
first theme was related to social relation between staff members or in other words “wasta”. Wasta is
well known in Arab countries and is defined as “the degree to which an individual perceives a person‟s
success as being related to their ability to utilize connections with people, who are both able and
prepared to change the course of natural events on that person‟s behalf. It relates to having special help
to get ahead in life, help that may not be available to others” (Whiteoak et al., 2006: 81).
It was concluded that some staff members especially older and with lower levels of education prefer
communicating face to face in order to accomplish transactions rather than having a full automated
service. In e-services transactions being processed are transparent and every phase of the process can
be easily tracked, therefore, all transactions are processed equally and fairly. However, when having
paper based transactions and the connections to talk to higher level staff, transactions can be processed
differently from others and sometimes even faster than any other procedure. A male participant (41-50,
below high school and categorised as a low level staff) who never used the e-service and showed
resistance towards using it said that “… if a transaction needs approval, it is better face to face. You
can discuss everything in details and be treated as a special case…”
University of Hertfordshire 2013 Page 123