A PRELIMINARY WORK ON INVESTIGATING UNITED NATIONS’S E-GOVERNMENT CRITERIA IN MIDDLE EAST COUNTRIES

Abstract

The benefits of e-government initiatives empowered by the information and communication technologies, are acknowledged widely with assessment criteria published by the United Nations regularly over the last 15 years. One of the reasons that United Nations has taken such assessment into agenda is the apparent advantages of such initiatives over the citizen, society and government. In parallel literature review and current status of Middle East countries, these issues are investigated with examples: Internet users, awareness and training, culture, intention to use e-government applications of the citizens, portal and interoperability. It is noted that assessment of human capital indices for these countries should be read carefully while considering these topics. The findings reveal the impact of human capital index on evaluating egovernment performance; geographical area and population also affect the adoption of e-government. For this, follow-up work is suggested to investigate the level of information and communication technology and computer literacy along with these factors in the region. This research has limitations which include the sources of information, exclusive economic and legal issues and a number of measurement methods.

Keywords

• E-government, Performance, Information and Communications Technology, Human Capital Index