1.5 THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND ICT IN PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM 1.5.1 e-Government Broadly speaking, e-Government is the use of ICT by a government for the provision of information and services to its citizens and businesses. This normally includes the efficient internal management of such information, better service delivery through electronic delivery channels, and greater citizen empowerment through easier access to information and more participation in public policy decision-making. It is useful to measure the state of readiness of countries with respect to e-government as such benchmarking enables countries to learn from each others’ experiences. One such measure is the Global EGovernment Readiness Index which has been assessed for many United Nations (UN) member states. available technology for their own benefit as measured by their level of education. As such, it is a composite Index created from the Web Measure Index, the Telecommunication Infrastructure Index and the Human Capital Index of the country. It is further noted that e-Government includes several types of electronic interactions, namely: government - to - government (G2G), government - to - business (G2B), business- to -government (B2G), government-to-citizen (G2C) and finally citizen-togovernment (C2G). While the other forms of interactions are important, the United Nations Global Survey is limited to the G2C and C2G aspects of eGovernment. However, any comparative measurement of G2C and C2G includes some assessment of G2G since improvements in G2C and C2G are closely linked to G2G improvements. The Index includes an assessment of the state of website development within the public sector of a country, the state of the telecommunications infrastructure of the country, and finally the capacity of the people of the country to use the Table 4: UN Global E-Government Readiness Index 2007 Details of the results for the Caribbean are shown in Table 4 above. Unfortunately, St. Vincent & the Grenadines and other OECS states were not benchmarked in 2007. It is noteworthy that the highest ranked Caribbean countries are newly ranked Barbados at 40th, Jamaica (45th), and Trinidad and Tobago at 68th. The rankings for the region show an encouraging upward trend which SVG aims to replicate. It is useful to consider some other relevant international rankings for ICT and related areas. Defining the Re-launch Point P a g e | 31