E-Municipalities applications in Turkey: A research on metropolitan and provincial municipalities of the Central Anatolia Region

Today, information and communication technologies, especially computers and the internet, have become an important part of modern society and have affected almost every aspect of daily life. With the use of computers and the internet in the provision of public services, citizens have had the opportunity to receive the same services whenever and wherever they wish, without being dependent on any public official. This development has revealed the concept of e-government in the provision of public services. The concept of e-Municipality, which is the extension of e-Government applications in local governments, has become important in terms of facilitating the delivery of municipal services to the residents of the city. As a result of this situation, studies on e-Government and e-Municipality have gained momentum worldwide in order to provide more effective and efficient service to citizens. The main purpose of this study is to examine the services offered by municipalities on their web pages in Turkey and thus to determine the point they have reached in terms of e-Municipalism applications and their level of competence. In this direction, the web pages of the Metropolitan and Provincial Municipalities in the Central Anatolia Region were evaluated by content analysis method, taking into account five basic criteria: "privacy and security, "accessibility and usability", "content", "service delivery" and "participation". As a result of the study, it has been observed that, within the framework of e-Municipality, municipalities need improvement in issues such as citizen participation in terms of content, although the web pages established in recent years are generally at a good level. Keywords: Metropolitan Municipalities of Central Anatolia Region, Provincial Municipalities of Central Anatolia Region, Web Site, e-Government, e-Municipality, Local Administrations