Reflecting On a Decade of Measuring E-Government Readiness Using EGDI: Has Anything Changed?

Over a decade ago the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) started to measure c-government development across the world using a range of indices and presented the rank of each country in biannual report. Using cluster analysis technique, this paper examines whether there has been a significant changes in the ranking of countries by examining the most recent survey results conducted in 2016 compared to the 2005 results. The study analyzed the data presented in the 2005 and 2016 e-government development indices of the 191 member states involved in the survey. The paper starts by providing an overview of the UN e-government indices followed by the research methods used in this study, followed by the research methods used to conduct this quantitative study. The results obtained reveal strong positive correlation between the 2005 and 2016 e-government development indices indicating that little variation occurred in the overall ranking of countries during this period. Also, the cluster analysis results identified three distinct group of countries/segments comprising Leaders, Laggards and Average performing countries. The results also disclosed that there is little change in countries' cluster-membership between 2005 and 2016 indicating that countries that were ranked high in 2005 survey are still leading in 2016, on the other had the countries that were struggling in 2005 are still struggling today.