Government Preferences in the Implementation of Public Complaint

Services: Social Media VS e-Government Applications

Moh. Muttaqin

and Vita Pusvita

Research Center for Society and Culture, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, National Research and Innovation

Agency, Gedung B.J. Habibie Jalan M.H. Thamrin Nomor 8, Jakarta Pusat 10340, Indonesia

Keywords: e-Government, Social Media, Public Complaint Services.

Abstract: This research aims to examine the preferences of agency service channels facilitating public complaints. It

compared social media and e-government applications for public complaints. The data was collected through

a survey focusing on government social media, including Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, and e-

government applications, specifically Website, e-LAPOR, and SIPASADA. A total of 30 agencies were

surveyed in South Tapanuli Regency, North Sumatra, Indonesia. The results showed that the agency usage of

social media for public complaints services is twice as much as its usage of e-government applications. This

finding can be a consideration for the government in determining which online public complaint service

channels should be prioritized if the condition of its implementation resources is limited. This research was

limited to online channels, few e-government applications, and social media. Further research can review the

preferences of the government and citizens on an application that is run through various service channels.

1 INTRODUCTION

Governments implement e-government applications

to provide citizen services. In developing countries,

e-government applications are generally designed by

the government, either partially or completely

(Kyakulumbye et al., 2019). Governments usually

harness their experience in designing e-government

applications that assumed to meet the needs of the

citizens (Salman, 2018). However, the utilization and

sustainability of the application is strongly influenced

by the users (Nawafleh, 2018). The users consist of

the government which also acts as an application

manager (middle user), and the citizens as end users.

On the government side, the adoption of e-

government applications can only run optimally if the

government has the ability to manage these e-

government applications (Haneem et al., 2019).

Meanwhile, adoption of these applications among

citizens is still less desireable due to the lack of a

social functionality with user-unfriendly language

and content (Laenens et al., 2018; Van de Walle et al.,

2018).

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0002-6345-6975

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5403-632X

Technology acts as a social function, including

social media, shifting the centralized government

service model to a network model for citizen

interaction (Aladwani & Dwivedi, 2018). Companies

and governments use social media to increase citizens

participation and collaboration (Al Islami et al., 2021;

Alryalat et al., 2017). This advantage makes social

media used as one of the public complaint service

channels (Eom et al., 2018; Reddick et al., 2017).

In contrast to e-government applications designed

by the government specifically for public complaints,

social media is generally used by the government to

provide information and requires strategies to

encourage public complaints (Criado & Villodre,

2021). e-Government applications do not provide

easy access for the citizens as well as provided by

social media (Maulani & Lestari, 2020), but the use

of social media as an alternative channel causes

additional channels to be managed.

The use of multichannels to provide services to

citizens must ensure the quality of the channels used

(Russo et al., 2014). In addition, the government must

also consider the efficiency and effectiveness of the

use of multiple channels in public services (Tangi et

Muttaqin, M. and Pusvita, V.

Government Preferences in the Implementation of Public Complaint Services: Social Media VS e-Government Applications.

DOI: 10.5220/0011509300003460

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Social and Political Development (ICOSOP 2022) - Human Security and Agile Government, pages 23-28

ISBN: 978-989-758-618-7; ISSN: 2975-8300

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

al., n.d.). Thus, in the condition of limited resources

needed to manage the multichannel public complaint

service, government preference is needed in the

selection of service channels, between e-government

applications and social media.

Literature review showed that most of the

research related to e-government and social media so

far has focused more on the role of social media in e-

government promotion (Adrees et al., 2019; Dwivedi

et al., 2017; Tursunbayeva et al., 2017) as well as e-

services in e-government implementation (Khan et

al., 2021; Vakeel & Panigrahi, 2018). Research on e-

government and social media uses more individuals

as subjects. In previous research, individual

preferences from the citizen’s perspective were

studied more (Bournaris, 2020; Sonnenberg, 2020;

Wirtz & Kurtz, 2017, 2018). On the other hand,

agency employees are also users acting as managers

(Papa et al., 2017), and of course have their own

preferences. However, there is a lack of research on

agencies’ social media and e-government

applications preferences; hence new insights are

required to fill this gap.

This research determined the agency's preferences

in public complaint services between interactive e-

government applications and social media. It

provided the agency’s overview in selecting service

channels.

2 THE MATERIALS AND

METHOD

This research applied a quantitative approach, using a

survey to collect data. The subjects included 30

Regional Apparatus Agencies (OPD) of the South

Tapanuli Regency. Regency governments have

limited-service management resources due to low

budgets and human resources. South Tapanuli

Regency was selected for its good growth in the e-

government index. The regency had a 2.64 e-

government index based on the 2020 evaluation

report on the Indonesian e-Government System

(SPBE). This score increased to 2.87 for the regency's

2021 e-government index, as the second-best in North

Sumatra Province. This index was better than the 2.24

national average e-government index in 2021. Public

complaints services are among the services provided

by the Electronic-Based Government System.

The object of this research includes electronic

services by Regional Apparatus Organizations for

public complaints through e-government applications

and social media. In the social media category, the

objects surveyed are Facebook, Instagram, and

Youtube, because all three are used in providing

public complaints services. Meanwhile in the e-

government application category, the object of

research must qualify as an application that has

embedded features that allow 2-way communication

between application managers and end users. Based

on these requirements, the surveyed applications are

described in Table 1.

Table 1: e-Government applications.

Applications Description

e-LAPOR Information system as the main channel

for public complaints services, general

application of e-government used

nationally

SIPASADA The regional licensing services,

featured with channel for public

complaints related to licensing services.

Managed by local government.

Agency

website

Online applications for disseminating

information on agency activities,

featured with 2-way communication

channel. Managed by local government

in agency level.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The three e-government applications in Table 1 are

organized in a website format, so they can also be

referred to as e-government websites. The results

showed differences in the number of owned and used

applications for public complaints. This means that

not every application in Table 1 is run by every

agency and not every agency that runs this application

uses it to provide public complaint services. Table 2

shows the data ownership and usage for the three

interactive e-government applications.

Table 2: Number of agencies owning and using e-

government applications.

Application

name

Number of

agencies

owning the

application

Number of

agencies using the

application for

public complaints

e-LAPOR 1 1

SIPASADA 1 1

Agency

Website

25 3

Table 2 shows that 25 of the 30 agencies had public

complaints applications. Of the 25 agencies, 1 had an

e-LAPOR application and an agency website, 1 had a

ICOSOP 2022 - International Conference on Social and Political Development 4

SIPASADA and an agency website, and 23 had

agency website. However, of the 25 agencies,

actually only 4 agencies use these applications to

provide public complaints services. The agency used

e-LAPOR as a public complaint service did not use

their agency website for the same purpose. In

contrast, those using SIPASADA for public

complaint services also used their agency websites.

Furthermore, other 21 agencies provide websites only

for dissemination services without a public complaint

service function.

The research also found that agencies own and

use social media for public complaint services,

including Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Table

3 shows the data on ownership and usage of the three

social media.

Table 3: Number of agencies owning and using social

media accounts.

Social

Media

Number of

Agencies owning

social media

Number of agencies

used for public

complaints

Facebook 7 2

Instagram 15 7

Youtube 1 1

A total of 18 agencies have social media accounts,

where 4 have Facebook and Instagram, 1 Instagram

and YouTube, 3 only Facebook, and 10 only

Instagram. Table 3 shows that most agencies use

Instagram. This social media use as an informal

platform using images to explain a process, attracting

users (Gruzd et al., 2018). Instagram allows

unrequited followers than Facebook, which limits

connections (Faber, 2021). Furthermore, 7 agencies

use social media for complaints, 2 use Facebook and

Instagram, 1 uses Instagram and YouTube, and 4 only

use Instagram. The government's response is an

essential strategy for using social media to build

citizens involvement, facilitating participation,

collaboration, and public complaints (Criado &

Villodre, 2021).

Tables 2 and 3 show more agencies with

interactive e-government applications than social

media. This is due to regulations, including

Presidential Decree No. 3 of 2003 on agencies'

interactive e-government applications, especially

government websites. The implementation is among

the assessment indicators for online services in e-

government development by UN-EDGI (United

Nation, 2020). Furthermore, the agency's initiative is

social media utilization.

Findings showed higher social media usage as a

public complaint service than interactive e-

government applications. This shows that the

government prefers social media to e-government

applications for public complaints due to several

following factors.

First, the service users (citizens) factor.

Apparently, interactive service facilities on the

website do not affect people's intentions to access e-

government websites (Cahyono & Susanto, 2019).

People prefer social media platforms to e-government

websites (Bonsón et al., 2012) because they are

unaware of the these public complaint applications

(Dini et al., 2018). Citizens and agency capabilities

affect the low adoption of these services, despite

being packaged as a social media model (Dini et al.,

2018). On the other hand, social media such as

Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube allow the citizens

to interact with the government easier and featured

with simpler access mechanisms (Khan et al., 2021).

The presence of social media helps reach wider

citizens attention (Joshi & Islam, 2018) and increases

complaints proposal (Hariguna et al., 2019) due to

higher user acceptance of promoted services (Yi et

al., 2021). Citizens also have good performance

expectancy (PE) of social media as a public complaint

service channel (Chao, 2019). This public preference

led the government to promote its presence on social

media as a social influence (SI), promoting

government interest and initiatives (Adrees et al.,

2019)(Singh et al., 2020).

Second, there are cheaper and easier service costs

using social media (Kahne & Bowyer, 2018; Silva et

al., 2019; Spierings & Jacobs, 2019; Vaccari, 2017).

Actually, e-government applications are also

intended for cost savings because these applications

are designed to be able to integrate various services

(Evans & Yen, 2006). However, these applications

are part of a sustainable system that requires

development and maintenance costs (Lederer et al.,

1990). While the costs of developing and maintaining

systems in social media applications are not the user

(including the government) responsibility, but the

developer.

Third, there are weak human resources

competence for e-government providers (Gao & Lee,

2017), including management and technical (Ariana

et al., 2020; Malodia et al., 2021). Competence

hinders the implementation of e-government in

developing countries (Sabani et al., 2019). The end-

users believe that social media competencies are

lower than e-government applications, despite similar

features (Park & Lee, 2018). The agency employees

as middle users have more roles in operating

applications than end-users, requiring higher

competencies (Papa et al., 2017). This demand

requires professional training for employees,

including time and money. Developing countries are

challenged by the lack of professional training to

Government Preferences in the Implementation of Public Complaint Services: Social Media VS e-Government Applications

improve employee competence in implementing e-

government applications (Sabani et al., 2019). This

can be solved through easy and relative technology

requiring less IT competence (Park & Lee, 2018). For

example, social media is an alternative to certain e-

government services(Khan et al., 2021).

4 CONCLUSIONS

This research showed that the government prefers

social media channels to e-Government applications

for public complaint services. Social media can solve

the applications’ limited developments, including a

budget, human resources, and citizen access.

This research provides new insights on the

government’s preferences at the regency level for

public complaint services between social media and

e-government applications. The channel preferences

discussed cover the citizen's perspective, indicating

that the adoption of e-government applications

through the public complaint services should take into

account the citizens' point of view to optimize the use

of services and budgets. However, its research

limitation includes focusing on government online

channels and disregarding traditional ones. The data

from the online channel cannot fully describe public

complaints in the area. Furthermore, the research

object was limited to several media. For instance, the

LAPOR application has other channels, such as SMS

and websites, besides the e-LAPOR channel.

This research recommends that the government

increase the citizens awareness of the public

complaint application to optimize its usage.

Governments can promote these services through

social media and improve the application to be more

responsive than social media. The citizens should be

involved in the application development to increase

their interest and appreciate their feedback. In the

selection of social media, the government needs to

prioritize social media that supports an interactive

two-way communication format, with users not

limited to certain circles and commonly used by all

age groups.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors express gratitude to the South Tapanuli

Regency Government for contributing to the data

collection.

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