Assessing the Readiness of Implementing Strategic Information Systems in Libyan Universities

Strategic Information System (SIS) is an indispensable practice for all universities and higher education institutions, for enormous competitive advantages in the marketplace for these institutions. This study aims to develop a model called Strategic Information System Implementation Readiness to assess the readiness level of implementing SIS at a higher education institution. This is done by the combination of the ZEN framework and an e-readiness assessment model. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from highly professional decision-makers, i.e., steering, executive, and strategic plan committees, at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Benghazi, Libya. The overall population size was twenty-five individuals who voluntarily filled out the questionnaire. The resulting quantitative data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software tool. The Mean, Standard deviation, and Cronbach-alpha are used for statistical analysis. The study results showed that the overall readiness index for all factors was 4.03, which indicates that the university has an accepted level of readiness to implement SIS. Nevertheless, more planning and improvements are needed to achieve the required level of readiness. In addition, the results revealed that the people factor had the highest reading value of readiness, 4.2. However, other factors such as SIS content, the economic viability of implementing SIS, and the process had lower reading values of readiness, ranging from 3.6 to 4.1, suggesting that there must be a great need to improve and enhance them before SIS readiness implementation.