Municipal services and public attitides within the scope of e-munucipality applications: the case of Mardin and Şanlıurfa metropolitan munucipalities

In the age when local service provision has moved to the digital environment with the developments in information and communication technologies (ICT), the desire of municipalities to benefit from digital tools for purposes such as efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, accountability and uninterrupted service delivery in service delivery has led to the concept of e-municipalities. E-municipality applications, which are vital for citizen-oriented services and a participatory management approach, have emerged with the digital transformation in Turkey since the 2000s. Municipalities, which initially transferred their services to the digital environment with centralised projects, created their own websites in time and offered e-municipal services to the public through their own web pages and various e-municipal applications. In this study, it is aimed to analyse the ICT-supported local services provided by Mardin and Şanlıurfa Metropolitan Municipalities in the context of e-municipalism through various variables and to reveal the attitudes of the people in these provinces towards these services. In this study, in which quantitative research method was adopted, a questionnaire was applied to 452 people living in the central districts of Mardin and Şanlıurfa provinces. The data obtained were analysed in the context of the hypotheses determined in the statistical analysis programme SPSS. In addition, the websites of the metropolitan municipalities subject to the study were analysed in terms of "content", "usability", "service/service", "privacy/security", "citizen and social interaction", "operational", "formal", "informational" and "strategic competence" variables. As a result of the study, it was determined that both metropolitan municipalities have some basic deficiencies in terms of various variables in the context of e-municipalities. In addition, it has been observed that citizens' attitudes towards e-municipalisation practices differ in terms of various variables. Keywords: Information Communication Technologies, E-Municipality, Mardin Metropolitan Municipality, Şanlıurfa Metropolitan Municipality.