A Fuzzy AHP Approach for Ranking the Application Barriers of Electronic Government in Iran

One effect of new and expanding information and communication technology and the digital revolution is the reality and potential of ICT to increase the efficiency and effective of government. Another is demands on governments to be more receptive to the needs of citizens. Governments must become more participatory, lower barriers and costs for access, and become more responsive. Electronic Government is one of the special concepts which have been performed successfully within recent decades. Electronic government is a digital, wall-free government with a virtual organization for presenting of online governmental services and further cooperation in different political/social activities. In order to have a successful implementation of electronic government strategy and benefiting from its complete potential and benefits and generally for establishment and applying of electronic government, it is necessary to have different infrastructures as the basics of electronic government with lack of which it is impossible to benefit from mentioned services. For this purpose, in this paper we have managed to recognize relevant barriers for establishment of electronic government in Iran. All required data for recognition of barriers were collected from statistical society of involved specialists of Ministry of Communications & Information Technology of Iran and Information Technology Organization of Tehran Municipality through questionnaire. According to the results, mentioned barriers for applying of electronic government in Iran are as follows: Technical & technological problems, Legal, judicial & safety problems, Economic problems and Humanistic Problems. With the fast development of the E-Government, it becomes critical to set up an E-Government Evaluation criteria system. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is a new multi-criteria evaluation method evolved from Saaty's AHP. So, this paper aimed to find out and rank the key factors and barriers that affect success in E-Government using fuzzy AHP approach, and give an evaluation method for E-Government in order to help researches and managers to determine the drawbacks and opportunities.

Government, Electronic Government, Information Technology, Barriers, Iran, AHP, Fuzzy AHP