SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTREPRENEURS ACCESS TO E-SERVICES IN TANZANIA

The world is currently witnessing a paradigm shift to e-administration, e-business, e-commerce, e-services, e-democracy and e-diplomacy (Qa der & Kheder, 2016).This has contributed towards improved work performance, transparency and accountability. The public is now able to access a varied range of online services provided by the government than it was before (Riany, 2021). In this endeavor, this paper intends to study on the assessment of Small and Medium Entrepreneurs awareness and Access to e- Services. A mixed research design was employed to guide the study.The study revealed higher level of awareness on e-services provided by BRELA and TRA to the public particularlySMEs. The study found that all social, mass and print media platforms are used for awareness creation about e-services,however social media platforms which involves Facebook, Instagram and twitter are frequently used by MDAs to communicate information on various organizational issues including promoting the access to e- services The study also found various gadgets for accessing e-services used by SMEs like smartphone laptops, desktops and tablets However, the findings of this study also show that there is moderate level on the access to these services. This situation has been contributed by various factors among them being lack of knowledge on how to use the devices in accessing e- services, unreliable internet accessibility, lack of time to visit BRELA and/ or TRA portals and low level of education among SMEs.