Strategy, policy, and legal barriers to E-Gov implementation in Afghanistan

This research aims to identify the strategy, policy, and legal obstacles facing the implementation of E-Gov in Afghanistan from the perspective of the government employee. Accordingly, an empirical study was conducted using statistical and descriptive analysis research methods to determine the existing strategy, policy, and legal barriers. The literature review on the subject showed that while there have been several papers focusing on obstacles to E-Gov in developing countries, including Afghanistan, few studies have focused specifically on strategy, policy, and the legal barriers to E-Gov within the public sector of Afghanistan. This study takes as its sample a total of 387 employees from 10 different government institutions in Afghanistan. The final results of the analysis indicate that respondents agreed on the existence of all the strategy, policy, and legal barriers listed in the survey. However, of interest was that four obstacles out of 11 rated either agreed or strongly agreed by respondents; that is, the absence of implementation guidance for E-Gov Projects (57.82%); lack of legal bases and comprehensive policy (58.35%); lack of security rules, policies and privacy law (58.39%); and lack of political commitment and coordination (58.34%), all of which were considered significant barriers. Therefore, the findings of this paper contribute towards filling the knowledge gap of E-Gov sector strategy, policy, and legal barriers. Furthermore, the results of the survey confirm the hypothesis that strategy, policy and legal barriers are among the major challenges facing effective implementation of E-Gov initiatives.