A recent United Nations e-government report has ranked the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the top performer in e-government readiness in the Middle East and Africa region, followed by Bahrain, Turkey, Cyprus, Jordan, Lebanon and Qatar.
The survey ranked countries in terms of e-government readiness as reflected in 'the generic capacity or aptitude of the public sector to use Information and Communication Technology for encapsulating public services and deploying to the public high-quality information and effective communication tools that support human development.'
The rankings were based on the three key indicators: governments' aptitude to employ e-government as a tool to inform, interact, transact and network; telecom infrastructure and human capital index which took into consideration literacy rate and the overall school enrolment ratio.
“E-government is fast becoming the key driver of a country's economy,” said Director eServices, Dubai eGovernment, Salem Al Shair. “However, certain countries have shown greater determination to transform themselves into knowledge economies within a stipulated timeframe. UAE is certainly one of them and the achievements have now been acknowledged by the UN report and several other studies,” he said.
The findings of the UN report give credit to some Arab countries for having “put tremendous efforts into developing their e-government programs in recent years.” Among the Arab countries, the report ranks UAE at the top, followed by Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon and Qatar.
According to the report, the United States has emerged as the world leader in e-government readiness, followed by Sweden, Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada and Norway. South central Asia and Africa had the lowest e-government readiness in the world. — (menareport.com)
© 2004 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
