Enhancing interoperable e-government acceptance for natural disaster management: a case study from Lin’an, China

Abstract

Over the years, numerous government agencies have made significant investments in the development of various e-government projects, which has significantly altered how governments interact with the public and businesses. The advantages of e-government, such as lowering administrative costs and generating public value, have been recognized in both academic and practical contexts. It is widely agreed that achieving these advantages relies on various technologies accepted by government departments Especially in the context of natural disaster management, the acceptance of e-government with new digital technologies can provide the effective ways for prompt and extensive collaboration and communication in disaster management that may enhance the decision-making of disaster response entities and help them response to disasters quickly.

Although government agencies worldwide increased IT investments in deploying new e-government information systems to improve natural disaster management, it is still difficult to achieve good performance due to the complexity of inter-organizational collaboration. Natural disaster management is a complex process involving the inter-organizational collaboration that made on the high requirement for integrating e-government systems, where e e-government interoperability become the key constraints. Hence, it is important to accept an interoperable e-government system for managing natural disasters. However, there is a lack of attention to the need of connecting, exchanging and reusing data with other organizations’ e-government systems. This research thus takes natural disasters as the research context, to explore the main interoperability challenges in the acceptance of an interoperable e-government system across inter-organizations.

This thesis conducted an in-depth case study of a successful case of interoperable e-government system used for natural disaster management in China. This case could contribute to confirming, challenging or extending the interoperability framework of e-government, which represents the purest or most clear-cut instance of the natural disaster phenomenon. Through conducting an in-depth case study, this thesis divided the acceptance of an interoperable e-government system in inter-organizations for natural disaster management into five stages. For each stage, this research identified the interoperability into two levels including horizontal interoperability between equative collaborators and vertical interoperability between hierarchical participants. Accordingly, the dimensions of interoperability are also extended and distinguished (e.g., legal interoperability, goal interoperability, technical interoperability, semantic interoperability, process interoperability, and knowledge interoperability). Following by which, this thesis explores corresponding measures for solving such challenges. The observations and interpretations of these issues could contribute to an understanding of how government agencies better accept an interoperable e-government system to manage natural disasters.

This thesis contributes to the previous studies in three aspects. First, it extends the view of studying e-government acceptance from technology acceptance theories to inter-organizational relationships. Instead of focusing on adopting technology acceptance theories to explore e-government acceptance, this thesis considers the complexity of e-government acceptance from the perspective of inter-organizational relationships. Second, it enriches the interoperability literature within the context of natural disaster management. This thesis expands the interoperability dimensions at both horizontal and vertical level. Third, this thesis contributes to the literature on natural disaster management by investigating what interoperability challenges hinder inter-organizational acceptance of e-government and what integrated solutions can help mitigate such barriers.

This study provides a successful case sample of the acceptance of an interoperable e-government system in inter-organizations for natural disaster management. Moreover, this research provides implications for e-government practitioners who face strong cross-border challenges when developing systems. Last but not least, this thesis reminds practitioners of the importance of interoperability issues.

Date of Award	Oct 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Nottingham
Supervisor	Alain Chong (Supervisor), Jenny Pu (Supervisor) & Yi Peng (Supervisor)