An Analysis of E-Government Readiness of Sri Lankan Government Ministries

Abstract

It is evident that, with the expansion of information technology and Internet facilities the vvhole world has boiled down to a one global village. Therefore in this global era, no one could not escape of being part of the global village and survive alone. Now most of the organizations arc adapting the newest technology they could obtain and the competitiveness now mainly base on the best possible technology they could acquire. Most of the private organizations of the world are now having their own websites and they provide goods and services to the public through on-line. The government of any nation plays a major role in providing information and other services to the public. As the provider of information and services to the general public, the government should provide them with maximum efficient and effective method since the public is expecting a similar kind of performance that they receive from the private sector. On the other hand it is a responsibility of the government to provide a high quality service to the public since the government depends on the taxes paid by the public. This study analysed the government ministries' websites of Sri Lanka based on 23 characteristics and categorized those websites according to the United Nation's classification on e-government readiness, i.e. emerging presence, enhanced presence, interactive presence, transactional presence, and networked presence. According to the analysis, it is observed that most of the Sri Lankan websites are falling under enhanced and interactive presence and there is a very long way to go to reach the international benchmark level.