Assessing Electronic Government Readiness of Public Organizations

摘要

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.