Global E-Government Readiness Report 2004: Towards Access and Opportunity

Article type: Review Article

Abstract: The United Nations prepares this annual report on e-Government for consideration in a much wider context. These are the "disparities" in access to ICT-related developments that are likely to become larger at the current rate of technological advancement. The challenge for development today, the UN believes, "is to find ways and means to surmount the inequality in developments from new technologies. This requires re-visitation of the ways countries think about ICT and e-Government. It needs innovative approaches to government and the public sector, business and the citizen, culture and society. A holistic approach is required which fully exploits the centrality of ICT for the vision of a future knowledge society." The 2004 report focuses on the question of what defines "access," that governs it and where are the countries of the world in terms of their provision of access opportunities. Presented below are excerpts from the report. The full text is available at http://www.unpan.org/e-government4.asp.

Journal: I-WAYS, Digest of Electronic Commerce Policy and Regulation, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 9-23, 2005