A Brief History and Milestones of
E-Government in Turkey
There
is not any unique and specific legal bases with regard to e-government in
Turkey. But a State Minister was assigned to coordinate all e-government preparednes
and implementations. This minister is responsible for determining all
e-government policies and reports directly to Prime Minister. Although central
and local administrations in Turkey had some e-government applications, Turkey’s e-government approach has mainly a
central character, having a belief that e-government policies and strategies
should prepare and coordinate centrally.
Concidering that independent applications would be ineffective and might
be create uncertainties, the government decided to commence an e-Transformation
Turkey Project in 2003. The main benefits that the government is expected to
gain through e-government applications and Transformation Project are listed as
follow:
·
Equal
enjoyment of and easy access to services,
·
To
eliminate bribary,
·
To
increase individual participation,
·
To
provide governance,
·
To
make institutions work rapidly and effectively,
·
To
eliminate red tape and to respond the need of citizens just in time,
·
To
provide low cost and high quality service,
·
To
decrease staffs’ mistake ratio to mininum,
·
To
enhance accountability and transparency
According
to the Project, a four-phase action plan was devised:
·
To
provide information in agency web pages,
·
To
provide on-line services by institutions,
·
To
form a single point to provide all public services through a portal,
·
To
create new kind of services
On
contrary to weak, scattered and seperate efforts of each institution in the
previous, e-government efforts were started to be handled in a strategic and
centralized manner. This organised endeavors were flourished immediately. 2003 -
The Central Civil Registration System (MERNIS), The Identity Information Sharing System (KPS), Central Address
Registration System (AKS) were the first fruits of this initiative. 2004 –E-Signature Law came
into force, Information Acquisition Law introduced which makes it possible for
all citizens to request all kind of personel or governmental information which
is not classified. E-declaration system that allows all public or private
parties sent documents and tax declarations pertinent to health insurance and
retirement process, 2006 - e-school
system, 2007 – National Information Community Strategy Paper and Standarts for
Public Web Pages were introduced, E-identity Card Pilot Project (which also has
biometric properties) launched, 2008 – Electronic Communication Law and a secondary
regulation to put into effect e-public procurement system was enacted, e-Government
Gateway, e-invoice
Project and e- land registry and cadastral transactions were launched.
The e-Government Gateway is a
website which offers access to all public services from a single point. With
the Portal 3. Phase of e-Transformation Project is achieved. The aim of the
Portal is to offer public services to citizens, businesses, and government
agencies in an efficient and effective manner through information technologies.
Services offered to the citizens through the e-Government Portal are
grouped as follows; Information services, e-Services, Payment
transactions, information and document sharing among public institutions, Shortcuts
to agencies and organizations, Information updates and announcements, Messages
to citizens from agencies. As of 11/09/2014 there are 19.447.147 registered users, 1028
service offered by 142 institutions
in the Gateway. 2009
– e-Centralized Electoral Roll, National Judiciary Informatics System 2009 -2014 Scientific and
Technologic Researchs Institution of Turkey (TUBİTAK) is assigned to help
transformation of and develop e-services for public institutions. From that
time TUBİTAK worked with government agencies, helped them to design e-services
and integrate them into e-Government Gateway.
It’s clear that central approach to coordinate efforts
of different government agencies paid off for Turkey. It seems to be a good
time to go further for the fourth planned stage of the Project which needs much
more sofisticated action. However, taking a step back at this stage of
operation and collecting feed backs from institutions might be useful to consolidate
rapid improvements before jumping to forward.
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