A Cross-Country Comparative Analysis of E-Government Service Delivery among Arab Countries Akemi Takeoka Chatfield School of InformationSystems and Technology, Faculty of Informatics, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia. E-mail: akemi@uow.edu.au Omar Alhujran School of InformationSystems and Technology, Faculty of Informatics, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia. E-mail: oa213@uow.edu.au ABSTRACT Much of the existing e-government research focuses on developed countries. Although a relatively small number of studies explored Arab e-government development, they did so in a single country context. This article provides an insight into the current state of Arab e-government developments. A cross-country comparative analysis of e-government Web sites and portals was conducted on 16 Arab countries to assess their development stages in e-government service delivery capability. Further comparative analysis was performed between the top Arab e-governments and the global top e-governments in developed countries with regard to “e-democracy,” often the highest level e- government service delivery capability identified in the literature. The results confirm a wide digital divide that remains between the Arab countries and the leading developed countries. Importantly, however, the results also show a wide digital divide even among the Arab countries studied, par- ticularly in the development of advanced e-government service delivery capabilities. These results have important implications for developing countries in managing both economic and non-economic resources effectively for successful e-government development. C  2009Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Keywords: e-government; developing countries; service delivery capabilities; development stages; Arab countries; e-democracy 1. INTRODUCTION Electronic government (e-government) refers to the rapidly emerging global phenomenon of the use of information and communication technology (ICT) as the new way forward in public administration. E-government development very often aims to improve public service delivery capability, as well as public administration governance, transparency, and accountability through the development of e-government service delivery capability. How- ever, e-government development projects often involve a complex network of stakeholders, Syed Nasirin and Anastasia Papazafeiropoulou are the accepting Guest Editors for this article. Information Technology for Development, Vol. 15 (3) 151–170 (2009) C  2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online 15 June 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/itdj.20124 151