Quatre E-Commerce World

Electronic Government, almost everyone in this modern era heard of it. But, how many of us has take advantage of it in our daily hassle life? From what i know, not much people uses it even though they are really busy with their daily work chores. They would rather take their time to go for the offline alternative.

How is it implementing in Malaysia? Before discussing the implementation, here is a little short and brief introduction. E-Government, in short, was initiated with the introduction of Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) in 1996. It was then launched in 1997 to bring the country into the informative age with the revolution of technology.

Implementation

The service started with the intention to transform its operations, modernizing and enhancing its service delivery. E-Government seeks to enhance the convenience, accessibility and quality of interaction with the public and businesses at large. Its vision is working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all citizens. It also strive to be effective and efficient in delivering services and be responsive to citizens’ needs.

E-Government is categorized as one of the Flagship Applications introduced in MSC. 7 pilot projects of the E-Government Flagship Application are as follows:

• - Project Monitoring System (SPP II)
• - HRM Information System (HRMIS)
• - Generic Office Environment (GOE)
• - E-Procurement (http://www.eperolehan.gov.my/)
• - E-Services
• - E-Labor Exchanges (ELX) (http://www.elx.gov.my/)
• - E-Syariah (http://www.esyariah.gov.my/)

The Objective of these flagship applications is to jump start and accelerate the growth of the newly developed plan.

According to a study, it said that the first trend of the e-Government advances has made an impact in the early stage of the implementation. Second trend showed in the emergence of the E-Government services are the effort in making operations more cost effective. Thirdly, promoting the e-Government services had become a main priority. They strive to increase the usage by the citizens after some studies found out that citizens rarely take advantage of the e-Government services. Fourth trend appears to be the challenges in integrating the e-Government services as they grow. Lastly, the trend also showed a personalization in the services provided, such as providing citizens with relevant services information quicker and more cost effectively.

Adoption Strategies

Studies addressed that the citizen adoption of e-government services suggest that trust and security (Otto, 2003) and transparency (Marche and McNiven, 2003) are the major issues for e-government adoption. Citizens’ trust towards the service for being effective and efficient will encourage the citizen to take the initiative to use the online services. Privacy policies and security should be guaranteed to ease the insecure feeling of the users.

Given that e-Government website is both an IT and a channel through which citizens and government interacts, technology-based knowledge is crucial. Having citizens who are not knowledgeable with computer, it will be impossible for them to take advantage of the services. Besides that, technical is also an issue (Cottam et al, 2004; George, 2004). User friendly is important. Websites provided must be easy to be used for easy understanding on the procedures needed.

It is believed that trust, social influence, and website ease-of-use impact perceived usefulness of the interface, combined with social influence, predict the intended use of e-Government. Therefore, attention should be given to the demand or citizen’s perspective for good feedback and adoption of the e-Government services.

Related useful link:

> MyEG Services Berhad

This is a review on legal post from My E-Commerce blog, which focus on the new rules for cyber cafes. There will be some new guidelines will be implemented by government soon in order to regulate the businesses of internet and cyber cafes. The new rules are:

1. Have to close by midnight daily.
2. Banned from using tinted glasses in their premises (must be able to see through from the outside) .
3. Only allowed to operate from the ground floor.
4. Those under 12 years old must be accompanied by parents or guardian and only allowed to stay up to 10.00pm.
5. Prohibited from providing gaming activities, gambling, pornography, music and publications with negative element.
6. Cigarettes and alcohol to be prohibited from being sold.
7. A book log to record the entry and departure time of the patrons.

These new rules provide advantages for society and also disadvantage to the cyber cafes businesses. One of the new rules stated that those who under 12 years old must be accompanied by parents or guardian. This rule is beneficial to the society because parents no need to worry that their children will go internet café without their knowledge. Besides that, it also will enhance society trust and confidence on internet café because internet cafes are not allowed to provide games and also activities with negative element to customers. This means that they only can offer useful activities to customers.

In addition, the new guidelines such as internet cafes have to close at midnight are a treat to the cyber cafes businesses because most of the cyber cafes’ customers are likely to go there at midnight. However, through the enforcement of this new rule, they no longer can do so. This will significantly reduce the earnings of their businesses.

Furthermore, gaming activities are the major source of activities to attract customers. By implementing this new rule, gaming activities are no longer available in internet cafes. This will leads to a cut down of their businesses income and perhaps will cause them closing down soon.

I think that these new guidelines need to do some amendment due to the benefits of the cyber cafes businesses. Otherwise, cyber cafes businesses will not sustain for a long time or the owners will not follow these new guidelines due to their own advantages.


Useful Links:
ecommerze.blogspot.com

Advantages of Learning Online

1. Convenient
The biggest advantage of e-learning is that everything is available for students, including classroom and instructor are accessible every time when students getting online. Students can get announcements, obtain notes, take practice quizzes, discuss questions and chat with fellow students. Except the due dates stated by instructor, students can manage their own schedule for fulfilling the requirements of the course.

2. Offer flexibility
Students can study any time they want and also with whomever they want. E-learning provides students the flexibility to spend times with work, family, friends or any other activity they like. For those people with keep on changing work schedules or people who make regular business trips, parents with small children or whose health stops them from attending classes on a recurrent basis, this manner of course delivery is most suitable.

3. Offer more individual attention
Students can communicate with their instructor via e-mail, and get their questions answered directly. Many students aren't comfortable asking questions in class. By accessing internet, students can eliminate that fear and ask their instructor questions freely. This means that E-learning enhanced the opportunity to learn.

4. Promote life-long learning
Having that spark of interest and knowing how to obtain information online ensures that what students learning are always existing to them. If students become interested in a particular topic, they can find online and look it up. Students will have developed the skills to get information, digest it, synthesize it, and formulate an answer to questions that comes their way.

5. Connect students to the global village
The Internet has linked the people of the world in ways we haven't known before. Many times the web sites students visit in a course will be based in another country. They may even meet and make friends with someone in another country because they all are a student in the same course.

Disadvantages of Learning Online

1. Require more time than on-campus classes
Students will spend more time studying and accomplishing assignments in the online environment than they will in an on-campus course. The online environment is text-based. To communicate with their instructor and other students, students must type messages, post responses, and otherwise communicate through typing. Typing is slower than speaking. Students will likely learn more in an online environment, but they will have to make a greater effort to achieve that learning.

2. Require good time-management skills
An Internet-based course requires that students build up personal time-management skills. As with most things, if students don't organize their time appropriately, they will find themselves buried beneath a seeming insurmountable mountain of coursework. Online courses require the self-discipline to set aside chunks of time to complete their studies. This means that students have to make online coursework in priority and not let other activities intervene.

3. May create a sense of isolation
In an online course, students may feel like they are alone with only their computer. This makes some students quite uncomfortable. A quick e-mail to a classmate or their instructor can help they feel better connected if the sense of community they seek is missing.


4. Allow student to be more independent and an active learner
Online courses require student to be responsible for their learning. Their instructor shares knowledge and experience with them. Although students will spend a lot of time offline formulating ideas and developing their knowledge and skills, they will also need to be a presence in an online course environment by involving to frequently posting quality ideas. As in face-to-face classes, just being a face is not enough. Students must share their ideas and knowledge and respond to their fellow students to be an active participant in the virtual classroom.

5. Give students more freedom, perhaps, more than they can handle
This freedom can be dangerous if students don't learn how to control it, especially when it comes to meeting deadlines for assignments or exams. Each online course has a schedule for them to follow that offers information about what content is included and due dates for assignments or exams. Use this to help them plan their time.

Useful Links:

e-learning/NAIT

Tracinge-Learning