Digitalization efforts in municipalities: A comparative analysis
Abstract
The ever-increasing urban population has led to the emergence of various problems in key areas such as the environment, health, zoning, and infrastructure, exacerbating existing problems. Municipalities, the administrative units closest to the public, are expected to deliver local public services more effectively and efficiently in line with advancements in information and communication technologies. In this context, digital municipality practices, a product of digitalization efforts, have become strategically important in today's understanding of public administration. In Turkey, municipalities' digitalization efforts began with the accelerated digital transformation process in the 2000s. Over time, local governments created their own corporate websites, making the services offered within the scope of digitalization directly accessible to citizens, thus enabling them to provide faster, more transparent, and more effective public services. The purpose of this study is to comparatively analyze the websites created by the Malatya, Eskişehir, Gaziantep, Antalya, Bursa, Aydın, and Trabzon Metropolitan Municipalities as part of their digitalization efforts, where they offer various services, using the interpretative content analysis method, based on various variables. As a result of the analyses conducted for this purpose, it was concluded that the websites of all metropolitan municipalities subject to the study were in good condition within the scope of “content”, “privacy” and “service” categories, but that Eskişehir and Malatya Metropolitan Municipalities were in better structure in terms of usability and Aydın and Eskişehir Metropolitan Municipalities were in better structure in terms of social interaction category compared to other metropolitan municipalities.