E-government applications in Turkey during the pandemic period

This study discusses the role of e-government and health applications in the world as general, and in Turkey in particular during the Covid-19 pandemic. With the spread of the Covid-19 virus around the world, Turkey has tried to stop the spread of the virus by taking measures such as social distance rules, movement and travel restrictions, and reduction of meetings. In order for the state to cope with this crisis, flexible and quick decisions had to be taken. For this purpose, "electronic" services have been used frequently. It has played an important role from the stage of stopping or slowing the spread at the beginning of the crisis to the stage of treatment and vaccination, that is, the normalization stage. Health practices are of great importance in the fight against the pandemic. In addition, e-health practices in Turkey provided sufficient information on the pandemic situation, updated periodically in full transparency. It has been stated that e-government services can play an active role in arranging appointments so that patients can access doctors and citizens can get vaccination services, as well as providing information about the pandemic, obtaining travel permits and solving important issues. The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in an increase in the use of e-government worldwide, including Turkey. The e-government portal continued to operate without disruption by providing continuity of communication between citizens and public institutions in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. In this way, it prevented grievances that might arise during this period. During the Covid-19 operation, the state provided its services through the e-government portal. The number of e-government portal users during the pandemic was the highest; in March, April, and May of 2020, it doubled compared to the previous year. There were 278,000 logins in the first three months of 2019; in 2020, the number of logins to the portal reached 631,000. The e-government portal, which increases in usage every year, was intensively used by citizens with the newly opened services related to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this increase in the e-government portal, which includes more than 5000 services, the services needed by citizens and services that are easy to open have been opened. During this period, the e-government portal also implemented services that provide solutions to citizens' needs. The most used services during the pandemic period are social support, primary application, travel permit request, 4/B 2020 scope list (Covid-19), HES code, and banking inquiry services with deposit/participation funds.