From E-Government to Good Governance and from Good Governance to Development... The Arab world in the global E-Government readiness report 2005 Arab E-government

The UN Global E-government Survey 2005 presents a comparative ranking of the countries of the world according to two primary indicators: i) the state of e-government readiness; and ii) the extent of e-participation. Constructing a model for the measurement of digitized services, the Survey assesses the 191 member states of the UN according to a quantitative composite index of e-government readiness based on website assessment; telecommunication infrastructure and human resource endowment.

As countries progress in both coverage and sophistication of their state-provided e-service and e-product availability they are ranked higher according to a numerical classification corresponding to the five stages of Emerging presence, Enhanced presence; Interactive presence; Transactional presence and Networked presence.

According to the global e-government readiness rankings in 2005, the United States (0.9062) is the world leader followed by Denmark (0.9058), Sweden (0.8983), and the United Kingdom (0.8777) in that order. Among the developing countries the Republic of Korea (0.8727) leads with Singapore (0.8503), Estonia (0.7347), Malta (0.7012) and Chile (0.6963) close behind. As a region, Europe follows North America while South-Central Asia and Africa bring up the last.

The e-participation index assesses the quality, relevance, usefulness and the willingness of government websites for providing online information and participatory tools and services to the people. The United Kingdom, like in previous years, was at the top in global e-participation ranking followed by Singapore (0.9841) and then United States (0.9048).