A Secure Maturity Model for Protecting e-Government Services: A Case of Tanzania

Abstract

E-Government Maturity Models (eGMMs) are widely used in the implementation and development of e-Government services. These models outline various stages for e-Government development. Information security and privacy are considered as the most significant challenges in implementing e-Government services, but unfortunately very few designs of eGMMs have considered security as a specific issue. However, even these few security responsive models consider security mostly at the transaction stage, and as such it is insecure to depend on security mechanisms provided at transaction stage only. This paper develops a four-stage holistic secured eGMM for protecting e-Government services with Tanzania used as a case study. The proposed secured e-Government maturity model has been designed by including the security layers which consist of technical and non-technical security related aspects in each of its four maturity stages. The model design process is based on the ISO/ IEC 27002 security standard and is guided by a design science research methodology. The paper main contribution is the proposed secured eGMM that addresses both technical and non-technical security related aspects at its maturity stages.