G L O B A L I N T E R N E T P O L I C Y I N I T I A T I V E
A Joint Project of the Center for Democracy and Technology & Internews
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G L O B A L I N T E R N E T P O L I C Y I N I T I A T I V E A Joint Project of the Center for Democracy and Technology & Internews |
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i s s u e a r e a s | E-readiness Guides |
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"E-readiness" refers to a country's ability to take advantage of the Internet as an engine of economic growth and human development. E-readiness has several components, including telecommunications infrastructure, human resources, and legal and policy framework.
An e-readiness assessment can be used as an information-gathering mechanism for countries as they plan their strategies for ICT development. It can help a society better understand what impediments to Internet development exist and what initiatives are needed to overcome them.
There are several self-assessment guides available online. These somewhat complicated documents try to be non-prescriptive - that is, they do not purport to tell countries what to do. They pose a series of questions or indicators and ask users to rate their country to determine its stage of development. Recommendations for the legal and regulatory framework that might make a country's system more conducive to Internet development and e-commerce are implicit throughout the guides. Two of these guides are found at:
The NGO "bridges.org" has published a "Comparison of E-Readiness Assessment Models," [html] [pdf] which analyzes the two guides above and others. It describes what they measure, including the tools' underlying goals and assumptions. Use this report to better understand the various approaches to e-readiness assessment.
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