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BEDOUIN EMPLOYEES’ AND SERVICE USERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS IN SOUTHERN ISRAEL ON SERVICE QUALITY, ACCESSIBILITY, AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
Abstract
Digital transformation has become central to public-service delivery, yet an online channel does not necessarily ensure an understandable, usable, or socially inclusive service. This study examined how Bedouin employees and service users perceive the impact of technology integration in public institutions in Southern Israel on service quality, accessibility, and social inclusion. An interpretive qualitative descriptive design was used to answer how the two groups understand digital integration in health, education, and administrative services. The purposive sample comprised 26 participants: 13 Bedouin employees and 13 service users, distributed across health (n = 9), education (n = 8), and administrative services (n = 9). Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted in Arabic and analyzed through an integrated deductive-inductive thematic approach. Five interconnected themes were developed: efficiency conditional on completion of the digital service pathway; effective access as an interconnected system of resources; redistribution rather than elimination of work and burden; mediation as a bridge to access and a limit on autonomy and privacy; and transparency and user control as foundations of trust, equity, and social inclusion. Technology integration was perceived as beneficial when it reduced travel, enabled tracking, preserved information, and supported completion. Its value weakened when channels were fragmented, messages were ambiguous, connectivity was unstable, attachments were difficult, or access depended on unstructured mediation. The study concludes that digital public-service quality should be evaluated through the complete user journey and the user’s capacity to understand, complete, question, correct, and control the process. Public institutions should combine coherent pathways with mobile-compatible design, plain Arabic, progress-saving functions, organized human support, and privacy-preserving assistance.
JEL: O33 – Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes; H83 – Public Administration; Public Sector Accounting and Audits; D63 – Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement; Z13 – Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification (for social inclusion and community aspects); H11 – Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government (if emphasizing public-sector service delivery); I38 – Government Policy; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs (if the focus is more on access to health and social services); O35 – Social Innovation (if the journal interprets digital public-service innovation broadly).
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejhrms.v10i3.2279
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