Obstacles toward Adopting Electronic Government in an Emerging Economy: Evidence from Kuwait

Abstract

The current study provides assessment to the current system of e-government in Kuwait. It also identifies possible obstacles towards promoting effective e-government and what should be done to alleviate these obstacles. A questionnaire survey has been used to achieve the aim of the study. During January and April 2017 the questionnaire was distributed to 275 public sector employees. Of which 200 returned completed resulting in 72% usable response rate. Descriptive statistics was performed together with Mann Whitney test to identify significant difference in the participants’ answers due to their managerial occupation. The study revealed that Kuwait has the required financial resources to adopt an effective e-government system. The participants in the survey indicated that Kuwait lacks an effective infrastructure of information technology and a major proportion of the participants demonstrated that they acquire a low or average level of knowledge and experience in information technology. They consider the current information technology system adopted by the Kuwaiti government is not secured enough to protect public data and information.