International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Applied Science (IJSEAS) – Volume-2, Issue-3, March 2016 ISSN: 2395-3470 www.ijseas.com 60 Trust Issues in the Adoption of e-Government Services in Local Level: Employee-based Perspectives Mohamed Adel Al-Shaher The Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Science University Politehnica of Bucharest București, Romania Abstract—In the last decade, governments worldwide are seeking to provide services to their citizens through the use of digital channels. One of the main reasons for this is that these channels can be reached by the majority of the citizens whether they are living in rural or urban areas. However, the application of e-government services is not an easy task. Regardless of how advanced a country in terms of ICT infrastructure and deployment is, many technical and non-technical issues must be faced in the adoption of e-government services. Concerns about inadequate security and privacy safeguards in electronic networks as well as the transparency of the public administration can lead to distrust in e-government services that might pose risks, such as unwarranted access to sensitive personal information or vulnerability to online fraud or identify theft. These concerns can be a key impediment to the take-up of e- government services. This study focuses on the relationship between trust issues (trust in the Internet and trust in government) and e-government adoption. Many previous studies concentrating on the citizen adoption of electronic services argue that trust in the Internet and trust in government are likely to be the crucial predictors of e-government adoption. To fulfil the aim of this study, a preliminary quantitative survey has been conducted with 64 employees at the University of Delhi-Qar. The results have shown that trust issues influence the e-government services adoption in local level based on employees’ perspective. Index Terms— E-government, trust in the Internet, trust in government, online survey, PLS-SEM I. INTRODUCTION As information and communication technologies (ICT) rapidly develop, coupled with significant improvement in digital connectivity, governments around the world are reassessing the way they work and interact both internally and external organizations (Beynon‐Davies & Williams, 2003; Irani, Kamal, Al-Sobhi, Weerakkody & Mustafa Kamal, 2010). Moreover, these governments use the Internet as a medium to deliver its services and information through government portal (Alomari, Sandhu & Woods, 2009). In the same vein, Pons (2004) refers that the use of the Internet to bring together a country’s citizens, businesses, and government is called electronic government (or e-government). Electronic government promises to transform the public sector by improving transparency, efficiency, and accessibility of the public services. Despite all the benefits that e-government brings, it is still in the early stages in most developing countries, and it faces many issues related to adoption, implementation, and utilisation (Alghamdi & Beloff, 2014). Citizens’ adoption and usage is less than satisfactory in many countries. According to Al-Awadhi and Morris (2008) and Pinto and Mantel (1990), user acceptance of IT is deemed a crucial condition for the effective implementation of any IT project. As for e-government services, many researchers assert that a significant number of governments worldwide are still facing the pressing problem of low-level adoption of e-government services by citizens (Al-Hujran, Aloudat, & Altarawneh, 2013; Belanger & Carter, 2008; Gupta, Dasgupta, & Gupta, 2008; Hamner & Al-Qahtani, 2009; Kumar, Mukerji, Butt, & Persaud, 2007; Lin, Fofanah, & Liang, 2011; Rana & Dwivedi, 2015). In the same context, Yonazi, Sol and Boonstra (2010) state that adoption is an important aspect for the success of the e-government initiative in developing countries. However, despite its importance, the research exploring issues that determine the adoption of e-government services by citizens in developing countries is still limited, especially in the Arab world (Alateyah, Crowder & Wills 2013; Alateyah, Chang, Crowder & Wills, 2014; Thi, Lim & Al-Zoubi, 2014; Al- Hujran, Al-Debei, Chatfield & Migdadi, 2015). Moreover, Saidi and Yared (2007) refer that even though the Arab countries share many challenges and factors, each country has its own characteristics, which makes experiences of e- government implementation unique in every country. In addition, Rahman (2014) claims that an important factor in the success of e-government is the citizens’ trust in e- government. Furthermore, McKnight and Chervany (2001) and Teo, Srivastava and Jiang (2008) argue that trust is a serious issue in the use of ICT. This argument is also supported by Akkaya, Wolf and Krcmar (2012), who affirm that most e- government endeavors continue to lag far behind their expected potentials, while some nations adopt faster than others. Therefore, Bélanger and Carter (2008) state that citizen confidence in government and technology is imperative to the wide-spread adoption of e-government. Alghamdi and Beloff (2014) also pointed out that trust issues can strongly affect the users’ intention to share their personal information and to perform online transactions when using e-government systems. More specifically, previous studies claim that trust in the