1 AIT Asian Institute of Technology

The citizens adoptin and trust of e-voting system in Afghanistan

AuthorSafdari, Mohammad Taqi
Call NumberAIT Thesis no.IM-19-03
Subject(s)Voting--Computer networks
Internet in public administration--Afghanistan
Electronic government information--Afghanistan

NoteA thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Information Management, School of Engineering and Technology
PublisherAsian Institute of Technology
Series StatementThesis ; no. IM-19-03
AbstractToday, many developing and developed countries around the world are working to provide the better services with more facilities to their citizens, business, employees and others departments through the e-government services. The success of e-government services is related to highly satisfactions of citizens to adopt or use the e-government services. The study aims is to investigate the current challenges and opportunities of current electoral process, and also determine underlying factors that influence the citizens to adopt and trust e-voting system in Afghanistan. The literature has shown that many developing and developed countries such as Brazil and India have successfully implemented e-voting system and some other countries are at various stages of piloting to address many challenges associated with traditional manual paper based system and is often tedious such as cost of physical ballot paper, intervention of unauthorized people for change the result, electoral delays, non-secure and time consuming in polling stations, distribution of electoral materials in different areas, and general lack of trust in the electoral process and government ’s policies. However, e-voting system is not being adopted in Afghanistan. This study measured the pre-adoption of evoting system in Afghanistan. Mixed qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gain the objectives of this study. For qualitative method, an interview has been conducted with four IEC officials to investigate the current challenges and opportunities of electoral process in Afghanistan. The quantitative method was done through a survey with 400 participants using quota sampling method to determine the factors that could influence the citizens to adopt e-voting system. The responses have been evaluated with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique. To analyze the data of this study we used Thematic analysis and Document analysis for qualitative based data and path Coefficient analysis for quantitative based data. The result revealed that diffusion factors group which includes relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trust in e-voting and trust of internet are important factors for influencing the citizens to adopt e-voting system in Afghanistan, and also other factors which could influence citizens to trust in e-voting system are relative advantage, trust of government, trust of internet, digital divide within the availability of resources and digital literacy, security, privacy of the system to be secure for electronic transaction of data and anonymity of voters in Afghanistan. According to the interview result with IEC officials, the important challenges that IEC faced during the previous electoral processes were security in polling stations, intervention of top level management, counting process, delays for the result announcements, and corruption. The finding of this study will guide the IEC of Afghanistan to know the perception and behavior of its citizens toward adoption of e-voting system, and also for the professionals and policy makers in improving and popularizing e-voting system as one of the e-government services by revealing the citizens priorities regarding adoption of e-voting system in Afghanista
Year2019
Corresponding Series Added EntryAsian Institute of Technology. Thesis ; no. IM-19-03
TypeThesis
SchoolSchool of Engineering and Technology (SET)
DepartmentDepartment of Information and Communications Technologies (DICT)
Academic Program/FoSInformation Management (IM)
Chairperson(s)Vatcharaporn Esichaikul;
Examination Committee(s)Guha, Sumanta;Matthew N. Dailey;
Scholarship Donor(s)Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE), Afghanistan;
DegreeThesis (M. Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2019


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