The state of e-services delivery in Kuwait: opportunities and challenges

This paper reviews the state of e-government services delivery in Kuwait as of 2011. Disaggregating e-government to its component units, it compares and contrasts the functionality and maturity of e-services provided on individual ministry websites and the Kuwait Government Online (KGO) portal, which was established in 2008 to provide a ‘one-stop’ centre for government-to-citizens (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) interactions and transactions. Drawing on field research in the country, the paper argues that whilst significant strides have been made in the development of e-government since the early 2000s, key challenges remain in the delivery of user-friendly and customer-oriented web-based e-services to citizens and residents. These pertain to an incomplete synchronization of e-services between the KGO portal and individual ministry websites, the limited availability of full e-services across government agencies, the absence of any integrated e-services involving multiple agencies, and the questionable value of some of the e-services provided. According to the authors, progress in the development of integrated e-services is impeded not so much by technological barriers, or by human capacity problems and levels of information and computer technology (ICT) usage, as by the absence of an enabling regulatory environment and the limited efforts presently made by government agencies at cross-departmental cooperation.