M-Government Services Initiatives in Oman

Introduction Mobile devices are now becoming part of our daily and business life. At the end of year 2001, approximately 14% of the world population--850 Million people--were mobile phone users. This growth has been spectacular especially in Europe after the telecom industry de-regulation and adoption of Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications (Sadeh, 2002). Now, mobile phones are no longer used only for voice communication but are a convenient way of connecting to the Internet and are used for transferring data, exchanging e-mails, and doing small scale business transactions (Sadeh, 2002). Mobile phone penetration is well above the home PCs usage in Europe and it seems that the trend will continue (Varshney, 2000). Mobile or wireless devices are widely used not only by developed countries but also commonly used by many other developing nations of the world and Oman is not an exception. Mobiles technologies with the introduction of internet enabled mobile phones, PDA's, WiFi and wireless networks have offered their users to enjoy all the benefits of telephones, information accessing, text messaging such as SMS (Clark, 2001; Donegan, 2000; May, 2001). A recent estimate indicated that over half of the Omani populations have mobile devices, while the mobile infrastructure in Oman is currently covering 95% of the country (Ministry of National Economy, 2007). The volume of penetration of mobile devices in the country is paving the path for more offering of m-government services accessible from anywhere and at any time. This lead to mobile government activities reaching a larger base in a more convenient manner. Thus, several organizations in Oman have started to utilize this to open mobile channels with their clients. Muscat Municipality developed an m-parking system which enables motorists to pay parking fees via SMS. In addition, higher secondary school students can now retrieve their end of semester grades (via SMS) by messaging their student seat numbers to a phone number designated by ministry of education. Many other organizations are now sending bulk SMS messages to citizens to inform them about different activities. Despite its early stage, m-government seems to have a substantial influence on the current m-government services initiatives in Oman, which are further needed to be explored. Purpose of the study: In this paper, an attempt is made to review the current m-government services initiatives in Oman and to understand the key factors to its adoption and diffusion. Background to the Study The Sultanate of Oman is a developing country, which is located on the south east of the Arabian Peninsula. Oman occupies an area of 309,500 square kilometers (Ministry of Information--Oman, 2008b). It shares borders with United Arab Emirates to the north-west, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the west, the Republic of Yemen to the south and the Arabian Sea lies eastwards. Oman is divided into five regions i.e. Ad-Dakhliyah, Adh-Dhahirah, Al-Batinah, Al-Wusta and Ash-Sharqiyah and four governorates i.e. Al Buraymi, Dhofar, Musandam and Muscat. The total adult literacy in Oman is 81% which is very high in the region and per capita income reaching to US$ 9070. Oman's real renaissance began with the accession of His Majesty; Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said to the throne on 23 July 1970 (Ministry of Information--Oman, 2008a). Oman's government system is monarchy (Ministry of Information--Oman, 2008a). According to the latest estimates (Ministry of National Economy--Oman, 2007), in 2006 Oman had a population of 2.677 million people. However, nearly 693,000 residents, 25.9 per cent of the population, were expatriates. Oman's currency is the Rial (OMR) which is about USA $2.60 per unit. The country's main revenue comes from oil and natural gas. According to the Ministry of National Economy--Oman (April 2008), Oman's 2006 GDP reached OMR 13,737 million (provisional), compared to OMR 104 million in 1970. …