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The information and communication revolution has made a significant contribution in improving the quality of life within nations. Technology can help governments to serve their citizens, who seek to receive government services with better accuracy, speed, and efficiency. As the influence of technology grows, it is clear that e-governments or the digital interaction between government and citizens, businesses, and agencies have an important role. However, countries vary in their application of e-government. For instance, there is a discrepancy in the e-government deployment between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. International reports show Bahraini e-government is more advanced. In fact, there are no analytical studies that provide clear and recent statement identifying the strengths of the e-Government in Bahrain which could be used to improve the e-government in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the objective of this study is to provide an in-depth analysis of the existing e-governments in both Kingdoms, which can be used to improve their performances. The methodology used in this study is the descriptive comparative method. The study was conducted by distributing 64 questionnaires to all employees who work in e-governments in similar service ministries in each kingdom. Afterwards, the data were collected and analyzed to identify the obstacles, pros and cons associated with the implementation of the e-government in both Kingdoms. The study found that the overall performance of the e-government in Bahrain is better than the performance of the e-government in Saudi Arabia. The study noticed a strong tendency in Saudi Arabia to utilize the e-government in processing electronic transactions. Furthermore, the vision and mission of the top management at Saudi Arabia are very clear. However, the study found 19 vulnerabilities that affect the implementation of the e-government in terms of: administrative management, IT infrastructure, technical environment and technical services; where it is clear that the technical services are regarded as the most vulnerable. In comparison, Bahrain has a clear vision and mission with a good involvement of the senior management in the development and continuous improvement of the management system. However, there are 6 vulnerabilities that affect its e-government performance. Furthermore, the study showed a number of obstacles to employing e-government in the two kingdoms in general. Each kingdom has 6 obstacles that got 10% or more on the relative importance scale. The most notable is the lack of trained personnel, followed by lack of awareness among individuals of the importance of electronic transactions. While in Bahrain, it was clear that the lack of national cadres trained in the field of e-government is the biggest obstacle followed by the difficulty of coordination and cooperation between government agencies. The study provides some recommendations to both kingdoms. In the Saudi side, there are needs to develop and train technical personnel, focus on increasing public awareness and empower financial and administrative personals and motivate them. In the Bahraini side, there are needs to increase development and training of technical personnel and to improve coordination and cooperation between government agencies.
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