An assessment on states official websites in Malaysia

Abstract

E-government has been an essential tool for serving the publics. Since its initiation in 1995, many resources have been allocated for its implementation across states in Malaysia. Literature reveals that while many studies concentrating on federal governments websites in general, not many studies have been conducted to evaluate the condition of government websites at the state level at presence. This is even made crucial as different states in Malaysia reflect variations in term of social, economic, political and technological aspects. In this study, the progress of e-government implementation across different states in Malaysia is assessed. The assessment is done by developing e-government index, which is based on three levels of public administration paradigm, namely old public administration, new public administration and new public service, and comparing it with online presence and services offered to the publics in the websites. This study employed a qualitative study where content analysis method is used by taking all the thirteen states’ government websites as a unit of analysis. This study found that different state websites performed with different scores over one another based on each level. In this study, Negeri Sembilan scored the highest and Perlis with the lowest scores. In general, this study found that most of the state websites are currently in the second phase known as New Public Administration. Keywords: E-government, State government websites, Index, public service delivery