EGOVERNMENT READINESS

ByEli Cohen[4]

In the last decade we have witnessed a rapid rate of Internet penetration worldwide. Although this Internet diffusion happened on a global scale there are significant differences between countries in terms of how far they went and how fast they have adopted new information and communication technology (hereafter labeled ICT). Since the adoption of a new technology varies between countries it is important to construct a composite measure of the country’s overall readiness to adopt and use a new technology and also to measure factors that contribute to the adoption of ICT. Various factors influencing Internet adoption have been considered in several studies.

A country’s overall readiness to adopt, use and benefit from using ICT is called country’s eReadiness. An important component of the country’s overall eReadiness is its government readiness to operate and benefit from the new environment. The concepts of electronic government (hereafter labeled eGovernment) has not been uniquely defined and used in literature. However, person may say that the ‘use of Internet technologies’, ‘access to information’, ‘service delivery’ and ‘participation’ are the most common keywords used in eGovernment definitions. Simply, eGovernment could be defined as the government’s use of ICT to serve both internally and externally through its organizational structures and activities. The label ‘eGovernment readiness’ is used to describe government readiness to adopt, use and benefit from ICT, and it also forms one of the main focuses of analysis.

The second focus in analysis is on the role that culture has in the adoption of ICT. Cultural differences between countries in general and particularly in relation to information technology adoption is a highly researched subject. For example, Dutch anthropologist Geert Hofstede defines culture as “a system of collectively held values”. The following authors identified cultural values as one of influential factors on adoption of ICT: Bagchi, Cerveny, Smith & Strand (2003), Maitland & Bauer (2001). Others also recognize the role culture could have in adopting ICT; for example, Bridges (2001) suggests that: “unique cultural and historical environment of a region must be taken into account as part of a national ICT policy to truly gauge the country's eReadiness for the future.” In other words, each country should find its own way to the optimal eGovernment readiness which is consistent with the national culture.

So, if we continue to develop informational culture, the degree of eGovernment service adoption could be explained in terms of the perceived administrative benefit from adopting eGovernment services, the political nature of online applications, the government’s organizational capacity in adopting new information technology, and the diffusion effect of eGovernment service technology.