Title: Assessing Electronic Government
Readiness
of Public Organizations
Abstract: Electronic
Government (eGovernment) has rapidly become a political imperative at
local,
national and international level. Based on the perceived success
realized
by the private sector through information and communication technology
(ICT)
introduction, diffusion and adoption, governments around the world are
becoming
more and more interested in embracing ICT, and respectively have made a
remarkable
progress over the last few years. Once only regarded as a means for
modernizing
the public sector and increasing government productivity and
efficiency,
eGovernment is presently recognized as a driver and a key enabler of
citizen-centric,
cooperative, and seamless modern governance. This implies not only a
profound
transformation in the way government interacts with the governed but
also
the reinvention of its internal processes and how organizations carry
their
business both internally as well as externally with other segments of
the
community. Based on the literature, it is frequently claimed that the
availability
of an effective eGovernment assessment framework is a necessary
condition
for advancing eGovernment proper implementation. This paper aims to
review
some of the existing electronic readiness (eReadiness) and eGovernment
readiness
(EGR) frameworks, to identify the different aspects covered by both
types,
and to discuss to what extent they can really fulfill their intention
in
acting as guiding tools in the successful introduction and
implementation
of eGovernment. Based on this discussion, the paper concludes that such
assessment
tools are not suitable in assessing EGR over a micro level (i.e., a
public
organization). At the end, the paper presents the building blocks of an
EGR
assessment framework. These building blocks - categorized into four
main
dimensions: strategy, processes, technology, and people - cover all
internal
factors that should be addressed when setting an appraisal framework of
eGovernment
success on a public organization scale.
Author: Nahed Amin Azab