e-governmentseminartalkingpoints.docVIP

E-government Seminar Talking Points E-government readiness needs to be recognized, in order to set realistic expectations. See E-government Readiness Index (2005) data. Pushing e-government solutions in countries lacking the pre-conditions for it to work is surely foolish. I doubt there is any magic score on the E-government Readiness Index that would guarantee success, but surely a country with a score of 0.3 would need to be approached much more cautiously than a country with a score of 0.8. This makes most African countries, as well as most small countries, rather unpromising candidates (see Table 1). Table 1: E-government Readiness Index: 2005 Region Average Max. Mini. # of Countries Top-ranking country Bottom-ranking country North America 0.874 0.906 0.842 2 U.S. Canada Europe 0.601 0.906 0.179 42 Denmark Liechtenstein South Eastern Asia 0.492 0.873 0.242 15 Republic of Korea Lao, P.D.R. South Central America 0.464 0.696 0.334 20 Chile Honduras Western Asia 0.438 0.690 0.212 17 Israel Yemen Caribbean 0.428 0.506 0.333 12 Jamaica Dominica South Central Asia 0.345 0.481 0.149 13 Kazakhstan Afghanistan Oceania 0.289 0.868 0.036 13 Australia Nauru Africa 0.264 0.532 0.066 45 Mauritius Niger World 0.427 0.906 0.036 179 U.S. Nauru Source: UN Global E-government Readiness Report 2005: From E-government to E-inclusion, UNPAN/2005/14 (United Nations, NY: 2005): /intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan021888.pdf Role of central public authority needs to be as a facilitator and an encourager rather than that of a director or controller. Encouragement and facilitation can take the form of TA as well as incentives (e.g., faring better in the annual budget process). While some standards-setting may be helpful, the fluidity of the ICT industry (its constantly and rapidly changing technologies and standards) will often put any central norm-setting body at a disadvantage. It is important to constantly keep in mind that such a central pu