The e-readiness of communities or countries is assessed using various tools
and methodologies. However, most of the existing e-readiness assessment tools
were designed to investigate e-readiness at macro-sectoral level and not for
assessing micro-sectoral entities such as SMEs. The existing macro e-readiness tools
and methods have varied definitions of the concept, with no standard definition
of e-readiness and methods of assessment. The choice of the tool depends mainly
on what it is to be used for and who is carrying out the investigation. The existing
tools focus more on ICTs and the business environment, and pay little to no attention
on information access, without which it is impossible to connect firms to the
global networked world. The macro e-readiness tools also fail to address the impact
of e-readiness on business organisations, and often do not provide suggestions on
what actions to take to move a country up the e-readiness ladder. The tools are
also largely quantitative, with their main method of data collection being through
a short survey questionnaire, and as such, very little information is captured about
people-centric issues such as perception, attitudes, skills, and awareness. Without
the capture of detailed qualitative aspects of e-readiness, a lacuna exists in decision
making processes on how improvements can be made to enhance the status
of business organisations. The other shortcoming of the existing e-readiness tools
and methods is the fact that most were designed to model situations in developed
countries and are merely adapted to situations in developing economies, resulting
in limited interpretative success.