Assessing Electronic Government Readiness in Egypt

Abstract

Electronic Government (e-Government) has rapidly become a political imperative at local, national and international level. The drive to implement e-government has become of critical importance globally. The e-government revolution offers the potential to reshape the public sector and remake the relationship between citizens and government. Several developing nations, including Egypt, having witnessed the benefits realized by e-Government in developed countries, took e-Government initiatives and achieved different success rates. It is frequently claimed that proving an effective e-government assessment framework is a necessary condition for advancing e-Government. The objective of this chapter is to present a framework that assesses e-Government readiness (EGR) in Egypt, focusing on electronic administration (e-Administration) within a public organization through obtaining its employees’ feedback. The suggested framework investigates the internal factors affecting e-Government readiness which are: strategy, processes, people, and technology. The chapter applies this framework on 2 public organizations in Egypt to test it and to set a comparison between both organizations in terms of the internal factors effect on e-Government readiness.

Organizational E-Government Readiness: An Investigation in Saudi Arabia

“…Interviewees confirmed the findings in the literature that action plans are important to ensure achievement of e-Government milestones and objectives (Bakry, 2004, Azab et al, 2009, World Bank, 2006. For instance, the Assistant Manager of IT Development (Interviewee # 12) confirmed that "the e-Government strategy has an action plan with all important KPIs."…”

“…All officials interviewed also confirmed the importance of processes automations in OEGR by applying ICT application systems that manage and integrate the data objects to support the business functions in the Business Architecture (Ebrahim & Irani, 2005b, Azab et al, 2009Lee, 2010a) for example: (Interviewee # 12) confirmed the importance of implementing multiple ICT applications: "The main ICT applications projects implemented at the organization were core business: civil affairs systems ("MGEEM", "SHOMOS", "TAM", Appointment system), passports, traffic, training system, Visa system, and ERP. Interviewees also discussed strategies for reassessing shared application systems and interconnecting them to ensure complete e-Government.…”

“…Consequently, there is a need for defining measures of success to improve awareness and to verify the feasibility of application of E-Government approaches (Andersen, 2010). To aid these efforts, research is needed to guide the assessment of E-Government at the organization level (Azab et al, 2009) as the majority of existing assessment models are more appropriate for the assessment of the overall implementation of E-Government at the country-level and remain limited in evaluating organizational-level e-Government projects.…”

Technology Aspects of E-Government Readiness in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature

“…In this situation, according to Azab et al (2009), e-government is predicated on leveraging the power of technology to deliver services provided by governments. However, e-government is still in an early stage and has not achieved many of the expected outcomes such as cost savings and downsizing, amongst other issues (Azab et al, 2009). Moreover, according to UNDESA (2003) reports, the e-government projects failure rate reached somewhere between 60-80%.…”

“…These comprise applications such as hardware, software, communication and networks infrastructure and Internet penetration respectively. Azab et al (2009) developed an e-government appraisal framework encompassing several components such as people, technology, processes, and strategic planning. Technology in this framework comprises information system structure, hardware, as well as technical support and development.…”