e-Government in Arab Countries: A 6-Staged Roadmap to Develop the Public Sector

Abstract

Governments the world over are competing with each other to be at a leading position in the arena of e-government. e-Government is seen as a path to modernisation and rendering more efficient and effective public sector services. Recent practices in the field have focused on bringing the government closer to the people. As such, governments worldwide adopted various government-to-citizen (G2C) e-government models in an attempt to improve and provide round the clock availability of all government public services. This article provides a review of the current e-government field with a focus on Arab countries. We present a conceptual six-staged roadmap that illustrates our account of idealisation on how Arab countries should prioritise their e-government short and mid-term efforts. It is a simplified model that represents mega functions that governments need to bear in mind when addressing the changing development needs of the globalised world we live in today. We argue that the stages of the proposed roadmap have the potential to support the development of the public sector and the emergence of the Arab bloc as strong revolutionised citizen-centric governments.