icegov2012 proceedings

4.2.1 Facebook Usage
Figure 3. Percentage of agencies that use Facebook per
category
Figure 3 shows the usage of Facebook among Saudi government
agencies; we noticed that the highest usage in descending order
was in universities (80%), municipalities (56%), councils (51%)
and funds (40%). The rest ranged between 33% and 14%.
The high usage of Facebook among universities websites explains
the popularity of social media services among the young Saudi
generation.
Also, we noticed that some agencies did not use Facebook, such
agencies include: Diwans, Colleges, and Departments. This can be
attributed to the fact that the number of agencies' websites under
these categories was low, i.e. they usually consist of three
websites in each category.
Regarding the usage patterns of Facebook, we can find that news
and announcements dissemination were the most commonly used
patterns. To be more specific, Funds and Presidencies were so
active in terms of updating their pages with news. However, all e-
Government agencies interaction with the citizens via their
Facebook pages used one direction without any discussion, which
can be considered as poor interaction. This way of interaction
might be attributed to the recent establishment of government
agencies Facebook pages or the absence of a clear usage policy of
such a media.
4.2.2 Twitter Usage
Figure 4. Percentage of agencies that use Twitter per category
246
In our analysis we found that there were 64 out of 170
government agencies which have Twitter accounts. From Figure
4, it can be clearly seen that the highest Twitter usage among the
64 government agencies was present in the University category
with a percentage of 72%. Municipality category comes second,
with a percentage of 67% followed by Ministry, Principality,
Fund, Council and other agencies categories that have a usage
range of 38% to 43%. While Directorate, Commission,
Presidency, and Establishment categories have a usage ranged
from 17% to 22%. Similar to the findings of Facebook usage,
College, Diwans, and Department categories were not using
Twitter.
Furthermore, among the 64 agencies which used Twitter, 77%
were up to date with recent tweets. In general, utilizing Twitter to
communicate with citizens is roughly a new trend in Saudi Arabia
as many agencies created their accounts between 2010 and 2011.
In terms of the different themes of usage, Twitter accounts were
mainly used for disseminating news and announcements. Overall,
Twitter is used as a one way channel to broadcast announcements
and news benefiting from the growing interest in Twitter inside
the Saudi society. Small amount of interaction was encountered,
among all agencies, i.e. 22% were interactive. The Ministry and
University categories have good interaction with their followers
which appears in terms of Q&As and replies. Other Agencies like
Saudi Arabian airlines and the National Center for Assessment in
Higher education are very active as well. It seems that these
agencies allocate enough resources (human and time) to interact
with the citizens.
4.2.3 YouTube Usage
Figure 5. Percentage of agencies that use YouTube per
category
Figure 5 shows the usage of YouTube among Saudi government
agencies. The highest usage was in: universities (31%),
municipalities (19%), ministry (13%), other agency (10%), and
the rest were below 8%. The agencies who do not use YouTube
were Colleges, Diwans, Department, and Council. Their lack of
usage might be attributed to the fact that videos are not needed in
their line of business.
Regarding the usage patterns of YouTube, we found that
announcements, interviews, how-to's (direction) and events
broadcasted in TVs were the most commonly used patterns.
Moreover, in most agencies channels viewers’ comments were
allowed. Finally, we can notice that most of YouTube channels