E-READINESS QUESTIONNAIRE FOR NORTH ... - Kunnat.net

1.4 Limitations
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community’s maturity across a series of ICT indicators that are considered as key in
facilitating development and delivering broad ICT-related benefi ts.
The results from this study provide information that can assist in the planning of
E-Government development cooperation activities involving the Southern countries.
It also proposes possible future areas where local government services can be enhanced
by ICTs.
This study experienced some limitations.
1. Some of the documents reviewed were published by national governments and
seemed a bit spiced up. Great efforts were made at obtaining very objective
assessments of the ICT landscapes of the countries by taking into account the
fact that some of the documents were spiced up and therefore needed to be
assessed critically. Even so, a few of these might have escaped the scrutiny of
the researcher.
2. There was the lack of information on certain countries and municipalities.
Even though it was the intention of the study to provide the same kind of
information on each of the countries and the municipalities for the sake of
consistency, it was diffi cult to achieve this. This was largely due to unavailability
of electronically published information on those issues. In some cases
where the information was found, they tended to be slightly outdated. This
limitation notwithstanding, the study was to a large extent able to provide the
reader with the general situation of the issues in focus.
3. Thirdly, the questionnaires were sent to only a few numbers of people even
though this was already anticipated during the study design. Our aim
was more to give an indication of the general situation on the ground within
the municipalities rather than a precise situation which would have required
a different research approach. Related to the above was the limited time in
which the study was conducted. The whole study was conducted in four
months and there was limited time for respondents to fi ll in and send back
the questionnaires. Some municipalities also responded late. Probable lack of
ICT skills or limited connectivity of some of the local governments limited
the response rate.
4. Conducting the study from remote location in Finland whiles all the municipalities
under investigation were in faraway Africa, obviously hindered the opportunity
to observe and obtain fi rsthand information that could not be found
online, or in any written publication.