The rankings were based on the three key indicators, government's 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. The survey entitled," World Public Sector Report 2003: e-Government at the Crossroads'' ranked countries in terms of e-government readiness as reflected in the aptitude of the public sector to use information and communication technology for encapsulating public services.
Salem Al Shair, Director eServices, Dubai eGovernment, said: "E-government is fast becoming the key driver of a country's economy. 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."
"The Dubai eGovernment has set the goal of migrating over 70 per cent of its public services to electronic channels by the year 2005, and we are on track to achieve that target," added Al Shair.
The findings of the UN report, published by Madar Research Group in its latest Research Journal, give credit to some Arab countries for having "put tremendous efforts into developing their e-government programmes in recent years."
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.
Al Shair said: "In the case of Arab countries, concrete strategies for e-government are of recent origin. As for Dubai eGovernment, we are proud that we have achieved the status of a regional leader in e-governance. This will motivate us to accelerate efforts to raise our status at the global level."
Quelle: Khaleej Times, 05.02.2004
