Determination of digital citizenship competence levels of public institution employees and examining in terms of some demographic variables

With the rapid development of technology, people carry out many of their transactions via computers and the internet. As the official transactions of daily life such as banking, communication, education, training and shopping begin to take place in the digital environment, the concept of digital citizenship, which means a person who can use technology correctly and appropriately, has emerged. The aim of this research is to determine the digital citizenship competence levels of personnel working in public institutions and examine them according to demographic variables. For this purpose, quantitative research method was used and data was collected with an online survey form. The working group consists of a total of 242 public employees working in 17 public institutions based in Ankara. In this research, the "Digital Citizenship Competence Scale (DVYÖ)", consisting of 21 items with proven validity and reliability developed by Metin and Cin (2021), was used as a data collection tool. In comparing the six dimensions and total scores obtained from DVYS in terms of age, education, unit of study, length of service in a public institution, and time spent on the internet outside of work, the Kruskal Wallis test and the Bonferroni method were preferred for pairwise comparisons. Mann Whitney U test was used to compare the DVYS scale on a gender basis. Statistical analyzes and calculations were performed with IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0 (IBM Corp. Released 2019. IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 26.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.). It was observed that the digital citizenship competence level of public institution employees' score was 79. In the research, it was seen that there was a significant difference between the scores of men and women in gender comparison only in terms of digital law and rights. Digital literacy and access scores show significant differences in terms of time spent on the internet. According to the results of pairwise comparison according to education levels, it was determined that the digital commerce scores of master's graduates were significantly lower than those of doctoral graduates. The results of the study are compared with the relevant literature and recommendations are presented for researchers, public institution employees and decision makers.