With the e-government project undertaken by the State Planning Organization (DPT), public organizations are starting to make the Internet part of their lives. Now citizens can conduct their official transactions over the Internet, ending the era of red tape in bureaucracy.
The primary purpose behind the e-Transformation of Turkey Project is to ensure that citizens can get better public services faster. In its action plan unveiled in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) had made reference to the e-government project. Within the framework of the project, the Information Society Department was established in 2003 as an entity subordinate to the DPT. The e-government work is being conducted by this department with the motto "Turkey transforms into an information society."
The e-government planning is being organized by the department with respect to education, communication, transportation, legal infrastructure, e-commerce, health and more.
The technical infrastructure and information security workgroup has been assumed by the Transportation Ministry while the education and human resources workgroup falls under the Education Ministry. Likewise the legal infrastructure of the project is being conducted by the Justice Ministry.
The e-commerce section is being completed by the Undersecretariat of Foreign Trade while standard setting falls to the Turkish Standards Institute (TSE). Finally, the Turkish Information Association (TBD) is taking party in the civil society aspect of the e-government project, participating as a monitoring workgroup.
This e-government plan is explained as the roadmap of a Turkey on the road toward becoming an information society. All governmental bodies, citizens, schools, students and businesses are included in the project. Citizens will perform their bureaucratic transactions on the Internet and the relationship between the state and citizen will have been carried from real life, in which the citizen often gets lost in the labyrinth of state organs, to the online world.
Professor Ahmet Ulusoy from Karadeniz Technical University (KTÜ), speaking with Today’s Zaman, expresses his belief that the e-government project will put an end to bureaucracy: “The bureaucratic transactions of citizens are getting thinner and the costs made for these transactions are decreasing. On the other hand, the state can make savings on time and personnel.”
In developed countries a significant part of the state-citizen relationship is conducted through computers. According to a study conducted by research company Taylor Nelson Sofres Siar, the highest e-government usage in European countries is in Sweden, with a rate of 57 percent.
It is followed by Singapore with 53 percent, the US with 43 percent, India with 31 percent, Germany with 24 percent, Turkey with 13 percent, Lithuania with 8 percent and Hungary with 3 percent. Giving a speech at the e-government exhibition organized by the TBD, Rahmi Aktepe, the chairman of association’s board, noted that the e-government project will allow public organizations to provide services 24 hours a day.
“The e-government is the product of a philosophy that targets a citizen-oriented, transparent, participatory, rapid and effective state. The e-government does not consist of transfer of current applications to the computer, but is the collection of a public organization that provides uninterrupted, 24-hour-a-day interactive services in the light of information technologies,” he said.
One of the most significant benefits of the e-government project is taking services to the immediate vicinity of citizens. The go-today-come-tomorrow period in which official transactions turn into nightmares for citizens will come to an end. People will be able to conduct most of their official transactions on the Internet.
Ulusoy believes that citizens’ perceptions of the state will undergo a complete overhaul with this project. “Public servants would usually adopt a disparaging attitude toward citizens. As they are saved from this kind of treatment, the citizens’ view of the state will become more positive,” he said.
Another novelty introduced by the e-government project involves transactions, such as paying utility bills, monitoring enforcement decisions in court, effecting birth and death registrations, being able to be performed online. Mustafa Şahin, a computer engineer who works on the software development for the e-justice’ project, an e-government application, complains that citizens and public servants have still not been able to adapt to the e-government applications.
“Many public servants are not aware of the transactions that can be conducted on the Internet. Some public servants working at the Turkish State Railways (TCDD) still ask people, ‘Why do you purchase tickets on the Internet? Can’t you find tickets at the ticket windows?’” he said. Ulusoy believes that the e-government application processes will become smoother in time.
“The tea producers in the Black Sea region would line up outside of banks in order to receive their payments. Now they can monitor the transactions on the Internet and can withdraw their money from the ATM. Willingly or unwillingly, people have to adapt to the new technology,” he said.
An important step in the e-government project is to make access to information and communication technologies more widespread.
Low rates of information flow and high prices for Internet usage, both of which are mostly attributable to the monopolistic control enjoyed by Türk Telekom, are seen as the biggest obstacles to wider Internet access. Insufficiency of the Web sites with Turkish content and added value producing services provided on the Internet are also seen as a reason for lower Internet usage in Turkey when compared to other EU candidate countries. The new AK Party government has a new term target to ensure that 60 percent of the population has Internet access and 15 percent has broadband Internet access.
Additionally the government is planning to decrease taxes on electronic communication and develop satellite production capability. Another target is to focus on special software products in the high telecommunications, education, health and defense sectors. An issue emphasized by the AK Party is the specialization of software. To this end software specialization will be ensured in the technology centers.
The AK Party, which emphasized technological infrastructure investments in its previous government term, will increase its investments in this term. The share of the research and development (R&D) work in the budget will be increased to 2 percent from 0.06 percent.
R&D work at institutions of higher education and within the private sector will be fostered. The private sector’s share in R&D investments will be increased from 28.7 percent to 60 percent and the number of researchers will exceed 80,000. Infrastructure for technology development and transfer centers will be completed. Biotechnology, technologies for nuclear, hydrogen and fuel cells, vaccine and anti-serum production, defense and space industry and information and communication technologies will be given priority.
The e-government project’s goal is to ensure that all small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), excluding the micro-scale business, will have at least one computer by 2010. It is hoped that 70 percent of these businesses will have broadband Internet access. As predicted by the DPT, 15 percent of trade will be made through e-commerce by 2010.
Moreover, at least 15 percent of businesses will be able to make institutional resource planning and 12 percent of them will be able to utilize modern business applications such as supply chain management.
In a report prepared by the World Economic Forum that lists countries according to their preparedness to transition to information societies, Turkey listed 50th among 82 countries. The top three countries are the US, Singapore and Finland.
The Labor and Social Security Ministry is one of the most successful institutions when it comes to e-government applications. Ending the queue troubles at the Social Security Authority (SSK), the ministry has made considerable savings in terms of personnel and resources. The ministry has implementer a number of online practices, putting an end to queue troubles for citizens and serving as a model for other bodies.
The ministry has been successfully implementing a project for the submission of declaration forms online. So far this system has been used by 870,574 businesses to conduct transactions related to about 7 million employees. A project for online payment of monthly premiums and related fines from the banks has also been implemented successfully.
Another project is the e-health net, which serves as the common computer network for 45 million people insured by the SSK. Under this, network infrastructure and computer systems have been installed in 146 hospitals and 430 dispensaries.
A application implemented by the Labor and Social Security Ministry aims at providing a common infrastructure for health documents of those insured by the SSK to prevent improper usage, preventing usage of fake documents.
Finally, yet another important project undertaken by the ministry is for providing documents certifying that applicants do not have outstanding premium debts to social security organizations. Under the public procurement law, companies are required to provide such certificates to tender commissions, and about 5,000 people were employed by the SSK directorates to issue such certificates. This project was launched in November 2005, and considerable savings have been made in terms of personnel and resources.
MERNİS to provide single number to citizenship information The first phase of the Central Population Management System (MERNİS), the oldest and largest e-government project in Turkey, was completed after 30 years.
Under this project, population-related transactions have been transferred to the digital environment and a central database has been created. Now citizens have easy-to-carry, irreproducible, modern ID cards. Civil registration and household statistics can be obtained quickly in a sound manner, and these can be provided through electronic media.
In the second phase of MERNİS, online access to the database will be made available to public organizations.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Samed Günek Ankara
Quelle/Source: The Journal of Turkish Weekly, 29.07.2007
