Developing E-government Readiness Factors

E-government readiness is critical and fundamental to e-government success. This paper reviews and differentiates the definitions of e-readiness, e-government readiness and e-government maturity, and examines the literatures on current assessment practices to identify issues, controversies and problems. The chapter then proposes a bottom-up approach to develop a field-based E-government readiness assessment method and factors that could be usable and applicable for a specific local government with its own unique e-government priorities and goals, and then tests the approach in a city government in China and receives positive feedbacks. As a result of this new approach and methods, a set of specific readiness assessment factors, rather than predefined all-size-fits-all criteria, are derived. The method takes both qualitative and quantitative approaches, and collects both primary and secondary data.