Assessing readiness for e-government enterprise architecture in a developing economy: Towards an integrated maturity model

Abstract

Developing e-government enterprise architectures as a means for acquiring interoperable solutions is being embraced by several developing economies. However, for effectiveness, a government enterprise needs to assess its readiness for both e-government and enterprise architecture. Various studies discuss mechanisms for assessing e-government readiness or e-readiness, while few studies give insight into assessing readiness for enterprise architecture. There are hardly any studies that provide a perspective on readiness assessment, that integrates both e-government and enterprise architecture aspects. Yet, adopting an architecture-driven approach to e-government implementations without assessing readiness for both e-government and enterprise architecture, increases the risk of two issues. Process-related issues arise when the architecture-driven change is not effectively implemented due to flaws in the procedure used, while product-related issues arise when desired changes are not achieved due to flaws in the product. This worsens the ‘design-to-reality’ gap that is already hindering successful e-government implementation in developing economies. Thus, this paper presents initial results towards an integrated maturity model for assessing readiness for architecture-driven e-government implementations. It synthesizes insights on assessing readiness for enterprise architecture and e-government. The applicability and feasibility of the model was evaluated using a demo that was conducted in a Ugandan public entity.