E-readiness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

e-Readiness is the ability to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to develop one's economy and to foster one's welfare.

There are several benchmarking indices at the macro (also called global, universal, etc) level, e.g. those calculated by the UNPAN, World Bank, EIU etc.

Because what appear on the macro level can hide wide heterogeneity among organizations (educational institutions, government departments, etc.) local areas (cities, towns, etc.) individuals (female, individuals with disbilities, etc.) in digital access, a micro level more detailed benchmarking is suggested to compute sub-measures for networking, applications, web-accessibility and readiness (NAWAR).

E-Readiness indices at the macro are constructed primarily for ranking countries, and thus are concerned with the global digital divide, i.e. the gap between countries that have access to ICT and those that do not, mainly because of differences in income, education, etc.).

NAWAR is constructed primarily to measure how ICT is actually put to work for development. For example, NAWAR is concerned with the gap between humans with respect to natural / assistive access to ICT in e-business environments, i.e. whether organizations have assistive systems (e.g. Braille keyboards and printers, one-handed keyboards, annontated web sites for screen reading software, etc.) and whether organizational cultures adopt green computing. More importantly, because NAWAR is concerned with how ICT is actually put to work for development, attention is given to change in the level of activity, i.e. the move from e-readiness to impact in e-business environments.

2006 E-readiness rankings top 10:

Rank	Country	Score
E-readiness score
1	Denmark	9.0
2	United States	8.88
3	Switzerland	8.81
4	Sweden	8.74
5	United Kingdom	8.64
6	Netherlands	8.60
7	Finland	8.55
8	Australia	8.50
9	Canada	8.37
10	Hong Kong	8.36