A Security-Based E-government Adoption Framework: An Outcome of a Systematic Literature Review

The pervasiveness of the Internet has propelled governments to provide online services through e-government platforms. Various countries are at different maturity levels regarding e-government adoption; where some developed countries such as Estonia are leading, whereas some developing countries are lagging. The uniqueness of every country calls for the need to understand the factors that promote e-government adoption. E-government adoption is a growing area of research where numerous studies have and continue to be conducted to test and validate new and emerging e-government adoption models. However, from a citizen’s perspective, the lack of e-government awareness and the prevalence of privacy and information security threats are regarded as significant inhibitors to e-governance adoption. Thus, it is crucial to consider such factors when promoting e-government adoption. Through a systematic literature review, this study aimed to review the e-government empirical studies conducted from 2013 to 2022 from the IEEE, Science Direct and EBSCO Host databases to identify the dominant e-government adoption frameworks and determine if information security controls, privacy controls and e-government awareness were previously included. Out of the 51 articles synthesized, a security, privacy and awareness gap in the existing e-government adoption frameworks was identified; hence, a security-based e-government conceptual framework is proposed. The proposed conceptual framework extends the technology acceptance model (TAM). This study aims to contribute to the existing body of knowledge on e-government adoption and the respective theoretical frameworks. The proposed framework needs to be tested and validated in various contexts.