A comprehensive readiness assessment framework for identity theft safeguards in web-based electronic government systems

Identity theft is becoming more commonplace as the number of criminals taking advantage of the World Wide Web to lure their victims increases. The users of web-based electronic government systems are certainly not immune to this trend although the governmental organisations of various levels (federal, state and local governments) are taking steps to adopt the best possible safeguards to prevent identity theft on their websites. Despite their enthusiasm to protect citizens, governmental organisations currently lack assessment methods specifically designed to measure the effectiveness of safeguards they deploy. To address this problem, we propose a comprehensive readiness assessment framework.