This is the ICT based research PhD proposal sample:

ICT Research Proposal Topic:

The perspectives and process involved in the implementation of the e-governance system in the kingdom of saudi arabia (of mecca and medina)- A Study

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES:

The aim of the study is the development of a prototype for the e-governance in the cities of Mecca and Medina. The study would also look at the different perspectives that govern the implementation of the prototype e-governance system in the states. A generalized view of the complete process would be studied and elucidated. The managerial and the operational perspectives shall also be delved into as a part of the study. The risk management is one of the most important parts of any study. The risk management would also be vividly discussed and dissected. The strategies which would be employed for averting the same shall be put into the proper forum. The objectives of the study are discussed with great detail. The salient points for the process are basically as follows-

•    The study would look into the development of the prototype for the e-governance in Mecca and Medina
•     A dissection of the various strategies that should be employed for the process
•    A brief look into the stake holders of the process and the effects on each one of them.
•    An analysis of the best practices in the area of the implementation of the prototype of the e-government.
•    The analysis of the problems that are related to the implementation of the process.
•    The analysis of the legislative processes that is required for the process implementation.
•    A subjective look at the risk management strategies that are involved in such a process and the implications of the process
•    A brief discussion on the development of a model that could be replicated across nations and areas that have the same socio-economic conditions.

RESEARCH QUESTION:

The research question is one of the very important parts of the study. The research question should not be very expansive; neither should it be very narrow in its intrinsic scope. The research question should be able to convey the sensibilities of the study, but should also contain the essential quality of brevity. The question that is going to be discussed here is “What are the perspectives and the processes involved in the implementation of a e-governance system in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (for Mecca and Medina)?”

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

This section looks into the challenges that would be plausibly faced during the complete study. The various problems and the accompanying roadblocks would be dealt with and discussed the ways to counter the problems shall be looked into to analyze the problems in a better way so that they can be solved. This would in turn enable the smooth implementation of the prototype.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature review is one of the most important parts of any dissertation. It ends to give a direction to the work and also tries to understand the implications behind it. The collection of the data is one of the most important parts in the total process in terms of the literature review. The type of data that is used here is called as the secondary data. It explains the already established works in the field that the research is being conducted on. Thereby, the basal direction of the research study is decided by the secondary data which in turn comprises the literature review.

Under the current circumstances that are present in Saudi Arabia, the implementation of the e-governance would mean the veritable reconfiguration of the resources (Lambrinodakis, 2007). There should be a widespread re  working on the existing relationship between the citizen and the state ,machinery, the state and the private mechanism to ensure that the access to the government information repositories is made without any hassles and this would lead to the transparency in the day to day operations. According to the leading author (Griztalis, 2002), there are various components in the process of the implementation of the e-governance. In a very broad way, the components can be classified as the government to citizen (G2C), Government to business (G2B) and the government to government (G2G).

There are five stages in the development of the e-governance mechanism. They are divided into the following parts
    the initial presence in the Internet
    the extended presence
    interactive correlations
    transactions
    wordless type of interaction

The ease of the implementation can be based on the factors that are the present. These shall ultimately define the relative ease or the difficulty in the development of the e-governance mechanism in the country of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the flaws that are inherently present in the economies are a major hindrance in the implementation of the e-governance regime. The general implementation of the e-commerce methods looked at the ways of reducing the cost involved in the complete procedure. The problem that is faced here is the implementation is done without the involvement of the general public in the complete process (Srivastava, 2007). This leaves a significant part of the decision making machinery out of the picture. This in turn, hampers the overall objective of setting up the system in the first place. There are a lot of advantages after the implementation of the process. The major advantages as a pert of he implementation of the process include the raising the efficiency of the mechanism at all levels, interaction of between the different components and the proper interaction between their primal components of the parts. The fundamental principles in the building of the interaction models in the process is the need for the formulation of the goals and the objectives, the correlation the implementation with the development of the platforms, there should be enough measures taken to promote the process of ICT and the relative ease of the program during the implementation which would also involve a considerable degree of accountability once the implementation is complete.

There are a lot of problems that would be faced as a part of the implementation of the program. The problems may be multidimensional involving a large number of fronts. The problems may be administrative or based on the roadblocks in terms of the implementation (Costa, 2003). The administrative roadblocks that are faced as a part of the process are the application of the power mechanisms in prior areas and the adaptability of solving a completely new set of objectives. The finest critical point that can be seen is the total structure that lacks the necessary accountability for the implementation of the projects.

The existing literature has spoken a great deal about the removal of the underlying obstacles and the formulation of the plan for its execution. The inept inadequacies have to be removed in order to achieve that objective.

But, the established literature also enlists certain points that are completely different from the existing thought process. Leading American authors K. Kramer and Dl King have argues that the process of the implementation of e-governance is not aimed at changing the existing structure in totality but making the necessary reforms to increase the level of efficiency .A fundamental overhaul of the total mechanism may en up hurting the process and also the intricacies of the process. There is a distinct paucity of the proper strategy when it comes to the implementation of the e-governance process. According to the leading author(Wimmer, 2002), the fundamental idea behind the development should entail the principles of the role of the government as an agency for the mobilization, the ease of the openness and the broad approach, the aggravated level of user friendliness and the overall participation of all the parties involved.

A great amount of stress has to be put on the complete process in order to achieve the end objectives. The implications of the process are distributed among a large number of areas entailing a significant number of the stakeholders. The primary difficulty in any kind of change is the level to which the existing legislation supports it. There is great demand for the legislations that take place on a sectoral level to support the promulgation of the ideas (Costa, 2003).  The exchange of the necessary information during that process is of a great amount of importance to ensure that the transition of the process takes place from the existing place to a newer paradigm. The ease of the shift is governed by the central ideas tat govern the change. Specific amounts of attention should be placed into certain areas for the achievement of these underlying objectives. The basal terms related to the area of information relations and the accompanying flow should be realigned and reformed. The control measures and mechanisms such as licensing, registration should be implemented in the most judicious way to optimize the usage of the resources (Lambrinodakis, 2007). The ICT measures should be made in a manner that they do not compromise the functioning of any process. The comparative process of the introduction of the amendments should be based on the differential strategy.

The literature speaks of the contribution of ICT in the implementation of the process and also about the ensuing role. The fundamental functions that can be achieved by this are the improvement in the performance, reduction of the overall costs of the process and the creation of newer mechanism for control. The check on the efficiency of the process should also be checked to comprehend the issues that are faced by the company. Steps should be taken that ensure the viability of the process in the long run and also ensure the assessment of the steps involved in the program (Srivastava, 2007). They should also ensure that there are some visible changes in the short terms perspective and the achieved end results are subject to the ed process evaluation. The problem that may occur here is the lack of certain defining parameters in some of the cases which may plague the total process of the evaluation of the implemented programs. The proper parameters of the implementation must be adhered to, in order to take adequate care of the processes. There are four basal preconditions that must be met in order to ensure that the service meets the specified standards. The conditions are quantified are informational, interactive, transactional and presentational. All of these criteria should be met to set the services for the implementation of the infrastructure.

Authors in the arena of the implementation of the necessary infrastructure have mentioned about the basic necessities for the implementation to take place. These are the fundamental details that need to be taken into the account for achieving the desired end means.

TCO(Total cost of ownership)- TCO is one of the most important parameters that decides the success of any particular process. The established literature has spoken about the importance of this factor in the formulation of the important decisions.     The total cost is primarily distributed within a period of three to four years which defined the setting up time of the process (Griztalis, 2003). The cost also involves the cost pertaining to the training the purchase of the technological equipments to support the process. There are costs associated in the up gradation of the systems, the security, the licenses and the preventive maintenance of the components.

Reduction of the operational costs- The operational costs involves the costs of running the operations on a day to day basis which would entail the expenditure at various levels. This includes the cost of running the operations at the various levels, which include the daily costs and the other costs of running the process on a daily basis.

The other factor that plays a role here is the reduction of the expenditure that is involved in the budgetary concerns. The allocation of the resources should also be a resource based allocation for the total process. The development of the process should be done in an extremely phased manner to ensure that all the steps are in sync with the central idea that is espoused.

The complete implementation of the process has to be done in a manner to maximize the total profit. There are a lot of managerial implications that have to be taken into account in terms of the application of the e-governance projects. Leading authors like (Palvia ,2007) have spoken about the risks involved in the process of the implementation. The major problems that are faced is generally in terms of the training and the delivery. A great amount of resistance comes from the individuals who are already used to the established means of the governance. They are not comfortable with the idea and the concept of the use of any technology that is new. This leads to the gap in the adoption process which is implication of the change(Sharma, 2007). The other factors that can be attributed to the adoption of the process is the disintermediation between the government and the citizens, various impacts on the economic and the social factors, the change in the social and the political factors in the area in which it is implemented and the change in the already existing processes or the status quo. The other problem that has been pointed out by the noted writers is the fact that there is a false sense of security in terms of the data stored. The research by the leading authors have also pointed out the role of the information management systems in the implementation of the process. A lot of due diligence is done by the individuals before the adoption of the process and the look at the parameters. The complete adoption process is influenced by a large number of individuals who ensure the salability of the idea. The adoption of the process would also depend on a lot of external factors that would make the process a whole lot easier in terms of the adoption procedure.  Brief study shall be made on all these incumbent factors to comprehend them better and also use them for the purpose of studying them in the best possible manner. This process would also ensure the due diligence adopted in the implementation of the prototype. This would make the total problem adoption a whole lot easier. Also, the other peripherals by the leading authors also express an idea. The problem areas may happen from a number of angles. The data may change in the hands of the provider as the security of the data cannot be taken into account. According to the author Kumar(2005), in the age of cyber crimes; it may be increasing difficult to safeguard the data against the attack of the hackers. The main disadvantages concerning e-government is the lack of equality in public access to the internet, reliability of information on the web, and hidden agendas of government groups that could influence and bias public opinions.
Authors like (Kumar, 2005) have spoke about the factors that can be of importance during the interaction between the government and the people of the area in which the regime is conceptualized. The increased amounts of the information being passed between the users and the controllers in the e-governance systems could lead the disbursement of high amounts of the data. That would lead to the data being freely available to the government and the loss of the privacy of the individuals. Doomsday predictors envisage the scenario of total loss of privacy of all the individuals (Theodosios, 2007).
In terms of the cost effectiveness, this complete exercise has been criticized by a lot of the authors like Bedi(2008). This example can be seen in the case of the implementation of the e-governance process in the Africa countries where the spending of the large amounts of money has not yielded any substantial results. There are a lot of risks involved in the process. Authors like (Wimmer, 2002) have spoken about the risk management strategies involved in the implementation of the e-governance project. The risk management strategies are the defense-in –depth strategy. This would lead to the employment of a large number of firewalls that would lead the safety of the data in terms of the firewalls involved. The other strategy that can be used is the employment of the depth in depth strategy that uses multiple layers of security to root any kinds of issues that are inherent with the system.  Therefore, these are te various types of the operational and the managerial problems that are covered in the literature of the major writers of the area.

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