Information Systems Research, 2012, Volume 23,
Issue 4, Page 1110-1130.
E-governments have become an increasingly integral part of the virtual economic landscape. However, e-government systems have been plagued by an unsatisfactory, or even a decreasing, level of trust among citizen users. The political exclusivity and longstanding bureaucracy of governmental institutions have amplified the level of difficulty in gaining citizens' acceptance of e-government systems. Through the synthesis of trust-building processes with trust relational forms, we construct a multidimensional, integrated analytical framework to guide our investigation of how e-government systems can be structured to restore trust in citizen-government relationships. Specifically, the analytical framework identifies trust-building strategies (calculative-based, prediction-based, intentionality-based, capability-based, and transference-based trust) to be enacted for restoring public trust via e-government systems. Applying the analytical framework to the case of Singapore's Electronic Tax-Filing (E-Filing) system, we advance an e-government developmental model that yields both developmental prescriptions and technological specifications for the realization of these trust-building strategies. Further, we highlight the impact of sociopolitical climates on the speed of e-government maturity.
Keywords: calculative-based trust; capability-based trust; e-government; intentionality-based trust; prediction-based trust; public trust; transference-based trust