Till Örebro universitet

E-government is a strong focus in many developing countries. While services can technically benefit from solutions developed elsewhere, organizational development and user trust and acceptance are always local. In Least Developed Countries (LDCs) such issues become more dramatic as services are transformed quickly from traditional manual procedures to digitized ones copying models from developed countries. One of the most critical trust issues is privacy protection; e-government services must be developed in balance with citizens’ privacy views.

To understand how to design trusted services in an LDC this study investigates information privacy concerns, perceptions of privacy practices, trust beliefs and behavior intentions towards using e-government services in Rwanda. The study was conducted by means of a survey (n = 540).

A majority of the respondents had a considerable level of trust, and a positive view of the effectiveness of service providers’ privacy practices. Most respondents expressed positive intentions towards using e-government services. Still, a majority of the respondents expressed considerable privacy concerns. Men were more concerned than women and reported a higher reluctance to use e-government service. As this study is one of the few studies of privacy, trust and adoption of e-government in LDC, it contributes to broadening the context in which such issues have been researched.

Privacy of information is a critical issue for e-government development as lack of it negatively influences users’ trust and adoption of e-government. To earn user trust government organizations need to provide reliable privacy assurance by implementing adequate information privacy protection (IPP) practices. African Least Developing Countries (LDCs) today develop e-government but focus is on quick technical development and the status of IPP issues is not clear. Little research has yet studied the status of IPP practices in e-government in African LDCs. To fill this gap, we assess the status of existing IPP practices in e-government in Rwanda, using international privacy principles as an assessment baseline. We adopt a case-study approach including three cases. Data were collected by interviews and a survey. The findings call into question the efficacy of existing IPP practices and their effect in ensuring e-government service users’ privacy protection in Rwanda. The study extends existing literature by providing insights related to privacy protection from an African LDC context. For practitioners in Rwanda and other LDCs, this study contributes to the protection of information privacy in e-government by providing recommendations to mitigate identified gaps.