Assessing e‑Readiness in the Arab Countries: Perceptions Towards ICT Environment in Public Organisations in the State of Kuwait

Abstract

In the information age, the gap between the developed and developing countries increased due to the ease of access to new technologies and the usage of information and communications technology (ICT). The first step in promoting e‑Government is conducting the e‑Readiness assessment E‑Readiness is defined as the degree to which a community is prepared to participate in the information age (networked world). It is measured by assessing a community's relative advancement in the areas that are most critical for ICT adoption and the most important applications of ICT. E‑Readiness assessment is meant to guide development efforts by providing benchmarks for comparison and gauging progress. It can also be a vital tool for judging the impact of ICT, to replace wild claims and anecdotal evidence about the role of ICT in development with concrete data for comparison. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the e‑Readiness assessment models and to investigate the perceptions towards the IT environment in some public organisations in the State of Kuwait. Three main variables (human skills, infrastructure and connectivity) have been used. These variables were derived using the terms suggested by Harvard CID and APEC models. The results show that less than half (46.57%) of the participants agreed that their organisations have adequate and appropriate connectivity, infrastructure and IT human skills to implement the electronic government systems.