Digitalization efforts within the scope of e-municipality applications in Turkey: The case of Samsun Metropolitan Municipality

Today, with the developments in information technologies, one-way communication is essential, clumsiness and inefficiency dominate in service delivery, a more transparent, accountable, citizen-oriented administration, which is more transparent, accountable, efficiency and efficiency in service delivery, has been moved away from the outward, state-oriented administration. The modern management approach adopted has begun to come to the fore. The most fundamental element of modern management approach is information and communication technologies. Information and communication technologies are a very important factor in ensuring quality, efficiency and productivity in public services, which is the sole purpose of modern management. Public institutions and local governments are trying to increase the quality and efficiency in the provision of public services by making use of the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies. One of the studies put into practice in this context is the e-government application, which allows many of the public services to be offered on the internet. Local governments, which are the closest service unit of the state to the citizens, have developed a digital platform called e-municipality by integrating the e-government application with their own methods. In this study, the historical development experienced with information and communication technologies in local governments and the place and importance of e-municipality applications created as a result of these developments in local governments are emphasized and the problems encountered in practice are revealed. In addition, face-to-face interviews were conducted with the citizens living in Samsun and its surrounding districts by using the survey technique, and as a result of the interviews, it was seen that only a few of the application modules were used in most of the municipalities and the rate of citizens having sufficient information about the application was low. Based on these results, it has been understood that the e-municipality culture in Samsun has not yet fully developed and as a result of the analyzes, concrete examples are given about what can be done for the development of e-municipality culture. Key Words: E-government, E-municipality, Digital Transformation, E-service, Correlation Analysis