Assessing electronic government readiness of public organisations : effect of internal factors (case of Egypt)

Governments have become more and more interested in embracing Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and have made a remarkable progress over the last few years. Electronic Government (e-government) - described as the strategic use of ICT to transform the public sector - is presently recognised as a driver and a key enabler of citizen-centric, cooperative, and seamless modern governance. E-government implementation implies not only a profound transformation in the way government interacts with the governed, but also a reinvention of its internal processes and how public organisations carry their business both internally as well as externally while interacting with the other segments of the community. Based on the literature, it is frequently claimed that the availability of an effective E-Government Readiness (EGR) assessment framework is a necessary condition for advancing e-government proper implementation. Most e-government appraisal models address the Electronic Service (e-service) dimension of e-government that focuses on the services provided by the government to the citizens on the Internet. This gives a very narrow perspective to e-government ignoring a key dimension: the Electronic Administration (e-administration), that highlights the importance of modernising the public sector, increasing government productivity, and transforming its internal processes. Furthermore, developed models assess E-Government Readiness (EGR) on a country as a whole without conducting an in-depth assessment on a public organisation scale. In addition, the majority of these models do not take into consideration the opinion of the civil servants involved in such e-government programs, a key stakeholder that affects their success. The objective of this thesis is to develop a framework that assesses EGR focusing on e-administration within public organisations through obtaining its employees‟ feedback. The suggested framework investigated the internal factors affecting EGR categorised into four dimensions: (i) strategy, (ii) people, (iii) technology, and (iv) processes. A number of measuring constructs are identified under each dimension. The framework components, relationships, and hypotheses were derived from the literature on Electronic Readiness (e-readiness), EGR, Information Systems (IS) and Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) success. In order to test the proposed framework, the thesis examined the relations and interactions of these components in an emerging e-government environment using four case studies of different characteristics to represent public organisations in Egypt. These organisations cover municipalities, investment, tax payment, and health sectors. Quantitative data collection method was through distributing a questionnaire to a sample of employees in each organisation. Data obtained from the questionnaire in each organisation was triangulated with data gathered from other sources of evidence: (i) interviews with top management, (ii) documentations, (iii) archival records, and (iv) observations. Findings of the empirical research were evaluated against the framework suggested in the beginning leading to a final framework that assesses EGR of public organisations. Findings revealed that framework's hypotheses were all confirmed. Concerning Egypt's EGR assessment, results proved that processes, technology, and people have a high effect on EGR, whereas strategy has a modest impact on it. This reflects that strategy is not given a high value in terms of e-government and that top management need to further promote e-government within public Egyptian organisations. Findings revealed also the modest impact of strategy on the two dimensions: technology and processes compared with its high effect on people. The research highlighted also the different measuring constructs that have the highest weights in each of the four dimensions. This helps in understanding e-government environment of public organisations in Egypt, showing the main components that affect EGR. The thesis though provides a rich insight into investigating e-administration within public organisations especially in a developing country such as Egypt, and presents a systematic approach to assess EGR of public organisations based on the four e-government building blocks: (i) strategy, (ii) people, (iii) technology, and (iv) processes. Therefore the thesis contributes to research areas in the literature related to assessments of information systems, e-commerce, e-readiness, and e-government readiness.