Master Thesis Examination - Ms. Fatima Aba-Alkhail

Master Thesis Examination

When: Monday, October 16 , 2017 - 1:00 pm

Location: Female Section: 4A-237, Building 324

Male Section: IS Department Council Meeting Room


Title: Design a National Metadata Standard for Saudi eGovernment

Candidate: Ms. Fatima Aba-Alkhail



Dr. Riyadh Salih Almakki (Examiner)

Dr. Mohammed Saleh Alkhulaifi (Examiner)

Dr. Abdulrahman Nasser Alasim (Supervisor)


The government websites have continued to grow over the years, so finding information on the Internet is difficult due to some obstacles, including the failure to use the resource description. There is a need to use a method of ensuring the user access to the information they are looking for easily also conservation of these data. The metadata is the information that describes data; it is one of the most important components of Information Architecture. The metadata is used to describe eGovernment information and services in order to make locating government resources easy. The use of descriptive metadata is essential in eGovernment for enabling user accessibility to government information.


This research is a sequential exploratory study seeking to identify the metadata elements suitable to Saudi eGovernment. The study population includes officials in the IT department in the government ministries that were interviewed to see how use metadata in their websites and their awareness of its importance. Also, Saudi eGovernment users from Imam Mohammad bin Saud university staff to check the difficulties they faced when they access to government information through research or through the website directly. Also the government ministries websites were analyzed in term of metadata application.


Data for this study was collected through interviews to gather qualitative data and questionnaires to collect quantitative data. The researcher used manual analysis to analyze the data from the interviews and used SPSS statistical software to analyze the data questionnaire. Also, the SEO tools used to analyze the metadata element in government ministries websites.

According to the findings, the implementation of metadata can be affected by some factors that include the soft-technical website design issues, for instance, content availability and accessibility. As well as , the nontechnical factors that could be hinder the metadata implementation such as lack of awareness among IT officials in government agencies about the metadata. In addition, the characteristics of Saudi eGovernment users were identified which helped to understand their needs. Finally, a national metadata standard for Saudi eGovernment was proposed which assists user access to the government websites.


This study contributes to the development of the Saudi government websites, where the metadata application helps users to access to government information. Also, this study attempts to fill the gap in literature about use of metadata in Saudi Arabia, especially in eGovernment.