ISTANBUL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
Institute of Social Sciences
http://www.sbe.itu.edu.tr/sts
ESST
THE EUROPEAN INTER-UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION on
SOCIETY, SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY
http://www.esst.uio.no
THE ESST MA
Possible Social
Impacts of E-Government
A case study of Turkey
Şadi Evren
ŞEKER
2004
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank to my supervisor Dr.
Iştar Gözaydın, for opening a new window to the social sciences in my
world during her lectures and her encouraging support during my studies.
I would also like to express my special gratitude
to Prof. Dr. A. C. Cem Say, for leading me on research methodologies and
academic life. The very precious thing that I have learned from him is the
question for research which he always attempts to apply his theoretical knowledge
into daily life while he searches for reality.
I would like to thank to Prof. Dr. Şebnem Baydere for her orientations to an academic world. She taught me how to
transform knowledge into useful products of intellectuality. She had
enlightened my pace through the importance of truth.
Table of
Contents
1. Introduction. 5
2. E-Government 6
2.1. What is E-Government?. 6
2.2. Dimensions of e-government 8
3. Turkey as a case study. 16
3.1. Actors network. 16
3.1.1. Inquiry and ANT. 22
3.2. Systems approach and large technological systems. 27
3.2.1. E-Government as a Large Technological System.. 29
Evolution. 33
3.2.2. Technological Determinism.. 36
3.3. social constructivism of e-government (SCOT model) 37
4. Conclusion. 39
5. References. 40
Appendices. 42
Appendix I 42
Some of the e-government applications from turkey. 42
Appendix II 45
E-government, from the organizations that Turkey is
a candidate or member. 45
APPENDIX III 48
Legal infrastructure plans for Turkish
e-transformation. 48
APPENDIX IV 51
INQUIRY RESULTS 51
ABBREVATIONS
ANT Actor
Network Theory
B2B Business
to Business
DPT Devlet
Planlama Teskilati (State Planning Organization)
HTML Hyper
Text Markup Language
ICT Information
and Communication Technologies
IT Information
Technology
KIT Kamu
Iktisadi Tesebbusleri (State Economic Enterprises)
NGO Non
Governmental Organization
SCOT Social
Constructivism of Technology
STS Science
Technology and Society
TBD Turkiye
Bilisim Dernegi, (Informatics Association Of Turkey)
US United
States
URL Unique
Resource Locator
USD United States Dollar
XML Extensible
Markup Language
1.
Introduction
In recent days, e-government is a popular subject
in Turkey. Fresh political will and the effect of European
Union, draw a directed path for e-government applications in Turkey. Besides the numerous studies in technological or
judicial studies, there are only a few studies from the perspective of society.
In this study we have targeted a more focused path by following the theoretical
background of Science Technology and Society. The most common theories like
Actor Network Theory, Systems Approach or Social Constructivism of Technology
is shortly described just before the commenting and modeling e-government in Turkey. On the other hand we have published a web site
holding an inquiry which contains questions about the e-government in Turkey.
By the help of theoretical modeling and results
from inquiry we have searched the answers of following questions:
- ”Can E-Government
be shaped by the cultural or social effects, or does the governance have a
uniform shape?”
- “Do we shape
technology for our purpose or does the technology shape our life by
e-government.”
- “What are the
subconscious of Turkish society about the technology, development or
social constructivism.”
In fact these questions can be answered by deeply
detailed and almost infinitive perspectives, but our purpose in this study is
only limited by the perspectives of STS studies and Turkish case. At the best
of our knowledge there was no such research exists during our studies.
2.
E-Government
2.1. What is E-Government?
Before commenting about e-government you can find
some definitions of the e-government below:
“Digital government or –following the current
technolinguistic conventions, e-government- can be defined as the civil and
political conduct of government, including service provision, using information
and communication technologies. “ , Ahmed(2001)
“eGovernment is the use of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organizations.”
, Heeks(2004)
“At its core, eGovernment is about the
changing nature of relationships from hierarchical command and
control, to an interactive collaboration between government and citizens,
businesses, public sector employees, and other governments. It is about opening
the doors to multi-channel interaction and service delivery.
And it is about having centralized, yet distributed operations to maximize
efficiencies, productivity, and service delivery.”, Mtwcorp(2004)
“The term (in all its uses) is generally agreed to derive from electronic
which introduces the notion and practicalities of 'electronic technology' into
the various dimensions and ramifications of government
The most frequent use of the term eGovernment (also spelled e-government
as well as egovernment, Egovernment, E-government, E-Government, e-Gov, egov,
EGOV, E-GOV and EGovernment and described as online government) is related to:
- the delivery of public
services, where there is an
'online' or Internet based aspect to the delivery of the services (online
government services are sometimes called e-services
- the conduct of
government business where the
activities of those involved in the process of government itself (such as
legislators and the legislative process) where some electronic or online
aspect is under consideration.
- voting where some online aspect is under
consideration.”, Freedictionary(2004)
Definition of e-government may differ from author
to author but their intersection is the digitization of governmental
operations. This digitization may occur in two different domains.
- The server
domain, which is inside the government
- The client
domain, which is the interface of governmental operation to the people and
other administrative entities.
The former domain may contain the communication and
integrity of the different governmental entities on the other hand latter
domain holds the whole exterior world.
The aim of e-government is the supply of technology
for the governmental issues. Since governmental entities deal with whole
population of the country there are always more and more jobs to handle in a
reasonable time and with a reasonable cost. So governments should find a
solution to increase the efficiency of their operations. On the other hand the
necessity of electronic medium is based on the citizens, companies and foreign
governments who switch to the electronic medium.
The question rises at this point is how much
electronic is a government? A government may be publishing only static web
pages to inform citizens or a government may carry its all operations on a
fully automated electronic medium.
We will find an answer to the levels of
electrification of a government in the following chapters, but like most of the
similar technologies, by electrification of a conventional system we loose
something while gaining others. This thesis study will try to uncover these
unmentioned sacrifices.
Let’s try to understand e-government and its
dimensions better.
2.2.
Dimensions of
e-government
In the following list we have tried to list all
possible dimensions of e-government. Most of the following items can be
categorized as an advantage or disadvantage from the perspective of government
or citizen, since we believe both of these perspectives have different desires.
Besides we have left these items with only small comments to ignite the
question marks of reader. The examples and discussions are selected from the Turkey domain to make our case study more successful. The
more detailed queries will be powered by these dimensions in the following
chapter.
- Employment: decreasing the number of employees without decreasing the throughput
in any organization can be counted as an advantage. E-government is away
of decreasing the number of jobs because most of the job will be migrated
to the automated software but unfortunately e-government requires more
qualified personal. So e-government creates unemployment for unskilled
employees while creating new jobs for qualified personals.
- Privacy: Privacy has a strong relation with the ethnic structure of the
population. A successful e-government application should obey the privacy
rules of the society. On the other hand there are some universal privacy
rules like Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. In the twelfth article
it is written as quoted below:
“Article
12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks
upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the
law against such interference or attacks.“
·
Privacy This
is a huge subject, the definition of family, the cultural role of privacy. Since
each society has its own cultural background, the term privacy may differ from
society to society. Unfortunately the only privacy criteria for the
e-government applications in Turkey, is
imported from European Union. Besides the question, “What is the privacy for a
Turkish individual or family” leaves open ended in today’s applications.
We
should be aware of the two ends of this dimension. On the one hand we have the
transparency on the other hand we have the privacy. More privacy yields less
transparency and more transparency yields more privacy.
- Reliability. Electronic applications may be counted as more reliable and robust systems than the human
employment. Although there is human employment in the electronic model of
government, the human factor is relatively skilled (educated) and error
detection is easier. So electronic systems reduces the human factor by
adding the machine factor (both has different kinds of errors).
- In the electronic
applications, optimization is
easier. Gathering statistical information and reporting is easier than the
paper based documentation. So governments can make strategic plans
depending on the characteristics of the society.
In fact, word “optimization” can have
many meanings, we only use this word as the optimization in the decision phase
of governmental operations. Moreover the word “optimization”, can be settled as
the optimization of whole these parameters.
- Mechanization of the system is possible by the e-government.
For example there are employees to simply filing documents in conventional
systems. Or the census can be automatically handled in the e-government
solutions. One of the results of e-government may be the interaction
between citizens and the e-government. Since computers are lack of natural
language or joking abilities, mechanization of a conventional governmental
operation may be a torture for the computer illiterate, old people for
example. Although the call centers can be considered as a solution to such
problems, mechanization of any component in the system effects the other
components, like the mechanization of society.
- Security problem. In our poll results security is considered as the biggest
disadvantage of e-government. Despite the secure online operations
available on the Internet like Internet banking, the Turkish society does
not feel secure on the Internet. While 100% security is never possible on
the Internet and society is aware of this fact and they see the
governmental data as a strategic entity, they agree on the security as the
biggest disadvantage. As a dimension, the more security makes things
harder and less security makes the system more user friendly, easy to
access. For example entering your password in each pages bores after an
amount of browsing, on the other hand not asking any password after
entering a site creates security gaps. Again in Turkish e-government case,
I think the decision will differ by the time and experiences.
While preparing this thesis, I could
not reach any formal study on the optimum security. The banks and companies
operating in Turkey with more experience on the online transactions and
Internet have never published such a document. Besides, there are lots of
differences from application to application. In one of the Internet banking
application, they advertise the amount of time you spend to make a simple
operation, while another advertises the number of security questions. So this
shows a disagreement on the level of security. I think a study on the
forbearance of Turkish society and required level of security in the Internet
operations is something needed before the implementation of e-government.
- Technological determinism. Despite the reduction in the number of
people employed in the system is an advantage, less people will be aware
of the design of the system, (less information in the design phase) which is
one of the reasons of the isolation of the system. On the other hand a new
generation who do not need social relations and sunk to the technological
applications will grow. Also substituting with a more complicated system
makes the system less understandable and less discussable. These are where
technological determinism and the systems approach ignited. Of course this
is not an unsolvable problem, but the social design of the system is more
complicated than the design of the system. Again this dimension of
e-government will be discussed in the following chapter.
- Cost. What is the cost of e-government and what is the cost of
conventional systems, what are the operational costs, what is the initial
cost are the subjects of this dimension. For example in the US case, there are lots of critics on the budget
and e-government spends. Smith(2004). In Turkish State Planning
Organization declares the year 2003 spends as 1,000,000 USD
and planning to sped 2,000,000USD in 2004, DPT(2003), Unfortunately Turkey
is lack of discussions on this spends, the only discussion I have
discovered during the search for this thesis is in e-mail groups related
to the e-government discussions. In the e-mail groups, the necessity of
national operating system and office applications and the insufficient
budget for IT is criticized.
- Psychological effects. Besides the other dimensions, electronic
government makes computers necessary in our daily life. This reality makes
the human-computer interaction more important. In my limited search during
this thesis I have faced with several risks of computers.
There are many studies about ergonomics for example.
Or another risk is the CVS (Computer Vision Syndrome). For example a
research on “Effect of Computer Training on Students’ Health” underlines a
fact as below:
Figure 1
Eye diseases related to computers, Kahn (200)
By the light of above, government
offices should continue human to human interaction (on the other hand we have
citizens with disabilities) and in the education system, citizens should be
became conscious about the healthy usage of computers.
- The judicial background of the e-government.
Are there any inevitable conventional paper based necessities? For example
the petitions should have wet inked signatures up until august 2004 in Turkey. Just after the first day of august 2004,
digital signature is accepted legal. For more information please refer to
the Appendix III legal infrastructure plans for Turkish e-transformation.
- Upgrades. The technological background of the e-government. Since the
technology has an upgrade momentum, it is inevitable that the e-government
applications will be upgraded. This creates a new market for the software
developers (especially the biggest developer companies).
This upgrades courses the common sense to a linear feeling, because the
idea of “a new upgrade is better than the older and it is the most correct
substitution of the old one, it is necessary to upgrade, etc.” creates
such linearity. In the course of this linear feeling, technological
determinism may sprout.
- Disaster plans. None of the governments want to loose all
governmental information in a single disaster. So making a disaster plan
is necessary. (Copying electronic information is easier).
- Electronic Disasters. There are only electronic specific problems
like y2k, or the magnetic field of earth or sun explosions are the
electronic specific problems, these problems do not occur on paper based
systems for example.
- Inconsistency. There are many independent governmental
organizations and each organization may try to apply its own e-government
solution or ERP which can yield the inconsistency. For example there are
more than thirty thousand municipalities in Turkey, besides governorships, police departments,
military bases, healthcare systems, and other governmental departments.
Each of these administrative entities may use different kinds of
e-government solutions which are inconsistent. To solve these problems, in
computer science there are new generation languages just created to make
data consistency like XML, which declares only the tags of data and
creates a flexible medium for data interaction. Below are quotations from
US, which underline, how XML fits the e-government requirements:
"XML would be a key solution of any
segment of e-government we go with," said Mayi Canales, deputy chief
information officer at the Treasury Department and an e-government portfolio
coordinator at the CIO Council.
"I think you're going to find a
little bit of XML in all of the initiatives," said Lew Sanford,
e-government program manager for the General Services Administration.
"This is what it was designed to do."
In several reports, it is underlined
that any government wants to implement a healthy e-government application,
should declare XML schema open to the whole world TBD(2004). Besides the
applications running over XML, Turkey is lack of such an online XML schema data source.
- Appropriate technology. In Turkish case,
the technology settled is not a national product. Since e-government is a
large technological system,
both the hardware and software is imported from the foreign companies with
the foreign philosophies. In fact there is an ongoing debate about “Do
artifacts have politics?”. From the same subjected paper of Winner(1986),
I want to quote two of the many impressive examples.
- the bridges over
the parkways of Long Island, New York. Winner notes that many of the overpasses
are extraordinarily low, having as little as nine feet of clearance at
the curb. Winner interprets this design as a limit of access of racial
minorities and low-income groups, since these bridges leaves a passage to
automobile-owning whites of ‘upper’ and ‘comfortable’ middle classes and
limits the passage of poor people and blacks, who normally used public
transit, which are twelve-foot tall buses and could not get through the
overpass.
- The atom bomb,
which he accepts as an inherently political artifact. He explains this
argue by the centralized structure of atom bomb. Rigidly hierarchical
chain of command closed to all influences that might make its workings
unpredictable. The internal social system of the bomb must be authoritarian.
I have quoted these two examples
because of their extreme similarities to the e-government. First, e-government
is only accessible from the internet and we should raise the question how many
of the Turkish citizens does have an internet access? By the end of 2001, the
internet access ration of population in Turkey is only %6,01
, which is ‘upper’ and middle comfortable class
in the example of Winner.
Second example fits the inner society
of e-government. It is almost as same as the social structure of nuclear
reactor or atom bomb. Fortunately we do not have any difficulties to adapt
e-government to our social and governmental society, because this authoritarian
structure is already acquiesced by the Turkish citizens group. It is obvious
that there is an authoritarian structure in the government and most of the
people hope an increase of treatment from the e-government applications. The do
believe that at least the necessary time period will decrease.
So by the examples of Winner, we can
say that there are politics behind the artifacts moreover we can mirror these
examples to Turkish case and conclude the political effects in e-government.
The tragedy part of these political effects is the import of these
technologies. We are not aware of political inheritances kept inside those
technologies. For example in the URL addresses
it is not possible to use any Turkish character. For example it is not possible
to access the web site of prime ministry of Turkey by just typing it in Turkish, we should convert
those Turkish letters to the closest letters from English alphabet.
Another critique may be the resources
of Turkey. For example Turkey has a great labor source besides the limited
capital. Unfortunately e-government is a capital intensive technology, which
require less skilled employee. On the other hand conventional methods are more
labor intensive and unskilled employees can be employed in the system.
Above critiques leaves a question mark
on how appropriate is the e-government for Turkey?
- Monopolization. The solution provider of the e-government has
a great advantage over the competitive companies. For example any software
and hardware solution provider for the e-government forces all the
peripheral administrations use the same technological solutions. And in
the second level any user who benefit from the government and the
peripherals also tries to use the close solution, if it is not clearly
hindered by the political authority. So e-government has a risk of
monopolization.
In a simple analyze of social structure
against the monopolization, we face the tragedy of social awareness to the
disadvantages of monopoly. This may be a result of KITs (State Economic
Enterprises), which are enterprise level organizations founded and operated by
the government and most of them were monopoly just before the privatization in
Turkey. This social condition ness of years
creates a suitable environment for the monopolization in Turkish society. For
example the usage of Microsoft products has a monopoly in the Turkish market.
At the best of my knowledge, most of the “developed” countries have alternative
software encouraged by the governments.
- Education. Education has two faces. The education of employees and the
education of citizens. For example the education of computer illiterate
people is an important subject of e-government. Also any government who
wants a successful electronic implementation should start the education of
Internet and related applications from the elementary school.
In the case of Turkey, education of employees is not organized yet.
Fortunately by the help of European Union, there are some statistical studies
to make some forecasts. (Appendix II)
- Time. “The Tax Office was probably one of the most disliked departments,
but now citizens say they don't have to wait for three to four months to
get their money back.” Copyright 2004 / The Australian Source: Australian,
The, MAY 04, 2004 Item: 200405041030649271
Turkey has a similar status in the most of the governmental operations.
3.
Turkey as a case
study
3.1.
Actors network
Just before starting the application of actor
network theory (ANT) over Turkish e-government, let me quote a brief definition
of ANT. Below paragraph has quoted from the
Encyclopedia(2004):
“Actor-Network
Theory (ANT) is an interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences and
technology studies, and closely relates to research in terms of complexity and locality,
activity theory, the sociology of knowledge and systems theory.”
Since the details and discussions of ANT is out of
scope for this thesis, I just want to comment some key features of ANT related
to our case study.
First of all ANT fills a big gap between
technological and social networks, which both has some weaknesses and
strengths. ANT is neither social network nor technical network but it is their
both combination and intersection. Technological networks are mostly built over
non-human entities, such as databases, computers, machine parts etc. which do
not cover any social or cultural entity and social networks are also lack of
those non-human entities. Callon, who first collects those two different actors
in the same network, names the collection of networks as convergence and
identifies this convergence as a translation of actors to the networks. Since
this translation has moments (the inevitable results, natural connections
between actors etc.), Callon defines four moments: Problemetisation,
Interessement,
Enrolment
and Mobilization. The key issues of ANT is summarized below, (Sidorova(2000)):
|
Actor
|
Any element which bends space around itself,
makes other
elements dependent upon itself and translate their will
into the language of its own. Common examples of actors
include humans, collectivities of humans, texts, graphical
representations, and technical artifacts. Actors, all of which
have interests, try to convince other actors so as to create
an alignment of the other actors' interests with their own
interests. When this persuasive process becomes effective,
it results in the creation of an actor-network. Callon, M. and B.
Latour(1981)
|
|
Actor Network
|
A heterogeneous network of aligned interests. Callon,
M. and B. Latour(1981)
|
|
Translation
|
The creation of an actor-network. This process consists
of three major stages: problematization, interessmant, and
enrolment. Numerous actors within an organization may be
involved in a different process of translation, each with its
own unique characteristics and outcomes. For purposes of
clarity, it is useful to focus on a single actor, from whose
vantage point we wish to see the process of translation. Callon, M (1986)
|
|
Problematization
|
The first moment of translation during which a
focal actor
defines identities and interests of other actors that are
consistent with its own interests, and establishes itself as
an obligatory passage point (OPP), thus "rendering itself
indispensable" Callon, M (1986).
|
|
OPP
|
The obligatory passage point, broadly referring
to a situation
that has to occur in order for all the actors to satisfy the
interests that have been attributed to them by the focal actor.
The focal actor defines the OPP through which the other actors
must pass through and by which the focal actor becomes
indespensable. Callon, M (1986)
|
|
|
Interessement
|
The second moment of translation which involves a
process of
convincing other actors to accept definition of the focal actor
Callon, M (1986)
|
|
|
Enrollment
|
The moment that another actor accepts the
interests defined by
the focal actor. Callon, M (1986)
|
|
Let’s start the application of ANT over Turkish e-government
by defining the actors. By definition, actors may be human or non-human
entities and their distinction is their centric roles.
Just before listing the actors let me notice that,
in world every thing is connected to everything else. On the other hand in real
world every thing is continuous, and it is impossible to get discrete samples
from the real world. What we try to do is underline the major players of
e-government in Turkey, of course someone can find a role for monkeys in our case study, but it
is obvious that this role will be extremely minor. Cutting from a line of
importance was one of the main difficulties while studying this thesis. How we
solved this problem is written in the definition of ‘Actor’ “Any element which bends space around
itself, makes other elements dependent upon itself and translate their will
into the language of its own”. So we have searched for the documents of all
possible actors and find out the names of other actors. If the name of an actor
is somehow written in the documents (reports, statistics, laws, regulations,
rules, etc.) of other actors, this defines a new actor. So the initial point
gets important in this way. We have solved this problem by starting from the
government itself, since it is obviously major actor in this network. For
example the below table is from State Planning Organization (DPT) and
represents the information society in Turkey:
|
|
Figure 2 Information
society Strategy from State Planning Organization (DPT)
|
Actors:
- Government group
- Transportation
ministry
- DPT, Devlet
Planlama Teskilati (State Planning Organization).
- Service
Providers. This entity is the most important entity in e-government
network. You can assume it as a front end to service takers. In fact
there is no single service provider entity in any e-government
application. Each government entity publishes their electronic government
applications in different and separate (and sometimes mutually exclusive)
locations, environments or to different user profiles. But to make the
network simpler, we have represented this entity by a black box way and
anybody who is interested in the details of Turkish Government can go
into details and open the black box.
- Citizens group
- Non governmental
organizations
- Public
Organizations
- Universities
- Technology
illiterate people
- Home Users
- Kiosks
- Foreign Users
- Foreign
Government
- Foreign
Universities
- European Union
- United Nations
- Foreign
Companies
- Commercial
entities
- Solution
providers
- R&D
Institutions
- Business Users
- Foreign
Companies
- Universities.
This group is one of the most interesting groups in our network. Because
of its uniqueness we have represented it in a separate group. In Turkey, universities have a direct connection to
government. Government can shape the structure of universities, number of
researchers or instructors or the budget of the universities. After 1996
there are some private universities mostly immature to launch a research
project. But for the current state, Turkish government mostly uses the
universities as a competent authority.
In figure 3 the skeleton of actor network is
represented. There are 4 main groups as listed above and each group has its own
entities. The communication between entities may be inside the groups or
outside the group. As you can easily notice, service provider entity in the
e-government group has most of the connections.
I think, one of the biggest weaknesses of ANT is
the power relation of the entities. In the network almost all of the
connections have a different kind of specialty. For example the closest
relations between “end user of citizens group <-> service provider of
government group” and “end user of foreign users group <-> service
provider of government group” has lots of differences, moreover the power of
connection may differ from country to country related to the relations between
two countries. Unfortunately we are lack of enough tools to display these relation
types in ANT.
3.1.1.
Inquiry and
ANT
First of all major role of our inquiry is to find
out the connection between two most important actors the citizen group and the government
group. The outcome shows us that in Turkey government is the major actor and placed in the
heart of both social and technical networks which is inevitable since government
is the enactor of laws, it defines the rules and connections of network. On the
other hand social awareness makes a huge gap on the e-government strategies in Turkey. For example almost half of people joined our poll
do not use internet as a tool of governmental operations. They still use the
conventional ways of governmental operations, while more than 20 major
governmental sources declares that they have the same operations over the
Internet. On the other hand the question of number of papers read about
e-government
shows us the awareness of governmental operations over the Internet. But these
obstacles can be easily handled since more than 20% uses the Internet as a
source of information.
These results show us that there is no direct connection between citizens and
government offices. In fact this is a true outcome because most of the
information flow from the government to the citizens is done by the press. We
have not included the press as an actor to the e-government since, by
definition it is not an actor to shape the e-government it is only a tool for
the flow of information.
Unfortunately, we can not clearly define the level
of problemetization, interessement or enrollment of e-government technology in Turkey, because there is a huge percent of technology
transfer in our application. But from the social perspective we can define the
major actors of problemetization as citizens just after the foreign companies. The
biggest settlement of operations over internet in Turkey is started with the banks. After the technological
transfer of credit cards and ATMs
, banks have transferred the internet banking to Turkey from the “developed” countries, which was the ignition
of governmental operations over the Internet. Hence citizens were aware of
operations over internet they have started to request for governmental
operations and by the help of smart politicians (almost all of the political
parties in Turkey have an e-government topic on their pre-election declarations. For
example in the current governing political party has declared the following
sentence:
“In public organizations, by settling the maximum
information and communication Technologies, e-government applications will be speeded.”
So we can summarize that, both technology and the
social request of technology is imported from foreign countries.
This import has ignited a problemitization phase in
Turkey and the focal actor (foreign users group) has interessement
of other actors in the system, for example European Union has a e-europe+
action plan and following paragraph is quoted from the background chapter:
“The E-Europe+ Action Plan is the roadmap for information society
designed specifically for acceding and candidate countries. It was launched at
the Göteburg European summit in 2001 to enable them to catch-up with the 15 EU
Member States that had already embarked on a programme of their own. A
ministerial conference in Budapest
on 26-27 February marked the end of the catching-up period for the new Member
States under e-Europe+ with the presentation of a final progress report. They are now joining the EU 15 on the
e-Europe 2005 Action Plan. However, the remaining three candidate states (Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey) continue to stay within the framework of
e-Europe+.”
So as merely declared above, Turkey still continue within the e-europe+ action plan
and should accomplish the requirements. So EU as a member of foreign users
group in our network has such an interessement directed to the government
group. So in the enrollment phase we see the prospective country Turkey.
We can emphasize the typical view of
“Developed/Underdeveloped” country relation in e-government applications. As a
source of technology, Developed countries interessements and the game end up
with the enrollment of Underdeveloped countries. So question raised at the
point is “How much does Turkey enrolled to the technology, how much black boxes
does Turkey imported and how is the technology shaped by
social and cultural background of Turkey?”. We keep the answer of social and cultural background
to the SCOT approach but within this chapter we can examine the enrollment
ratio of Turkey.
Let’s turn back to our poll. The biggest percent of
answers on 9th
question is “Behind the Developed Countries”. This answer gives key information
about the subconscious of people, which is a strong proof of our claim.
So a methodical schema of ANT to e-government in Turkey is displayed below:
Problem: E-Government in Turkey
Domain: All Governmental operations in Turkey
Technological Black box: Internet Technologies
Intersection: Governmental operations in Turkey from the Internet
Problematisation: How can we do all governmental
operations better, via the Internet?
CATWOE Analysis:
Clients: Citizens, Foreign and local Commercial
Entities
Actors: Government, Citizens, Commercial Entities,
Foreign Entities, Universities and Social Organizations, Service Providers
Transformation: Shift from Conventional to
Electronic Government
Worldview: There are four levels of e-government
applications, higher level higher satisfaction on clients Windley(2002):
|
Level 1:
Simple
Website
|
Level 2:
Online
Government
|
Level 3:
Integrated
Government
|
Level 4:
Transformed
Government
|
|
Static
pages
Lists
of departments
and
contact
information
Links
to separate
departments
Policy
statements
Downloadable
forms
and
documents
Access
primarily via
telephone
No
site reporting,
tracking
or analysis
|
Departmental
focus
Online
forms for
applications
and
registrations
Online
payment
Request
information
or
service via email
Respond
to online
surveys
Limited
online help,
FAQs,
resolution
services
Basic
account inquiry
Basic
benefits
enrollment
|
End-to-end
electronic
transactions
Automated
RFP and
procurement
process
Cross-departmental
sharing
of information
Automated
advice
and
problem
resolution
data
Limited
configuration
capabilities
Self-service
HR
administration
Web-based
training
|
Community-centric,
integrated,
intergovernmental
processes
Common
platform for
targeting
content
through
any
channel/touch
point
Internal/external
business
process
integration
and
collaboration
(planning,
workflow,
design)
Constituent
case
tracking
to ensure
resolution
and
satisfaction
Highly
configurable
HR
(benefits, career
planning,
development
training)
|
Table 1 four levels of e-government
Owner(s): Government, Citizens
Environment: Governmental offices, (ministries,
municipality, tax offices, police etc.)
3.2.
Systems
approach and large technological systems
If there is systems approach in any actors of
network, the whole network can be considered as under effect of systems
approach. Fist let’s consider the reshaping or reconfiguration of e-government
and its social impacts.
First of all reshaping or reconfiguration of any
large technological system directly shapes our daily lives. As a citizen we
have rights and duties against the government and reshaping the way we do our
duties, effect our daily lives. In fact, being a citizen is being a part of
large technological system, if we consider the taxes, roads, bridges, security
systems, army or any other governmental issue. From the perspective of systems
approach we should question the isolation of those systems. For example, how
much the frequency assignment to radio stations is isolated from our daily
life, or how much do we aware of agricultural technology support. The isolation
level may be different from technology to technology. On the other hand there
are some black boxed components in electronic government.
From the perspective of isolation, e-government may
yield two counter results. First, e-government makes the governmental issues
transparent, easily understandable. The counter result is the effect of computerization
and foreign technology settlement.
Former result can be considered as an advantage of
e-government, since governmental operations can be tracked by the computers on
our homes, makes these issues more easy and understandable. Any citizen can immediately
get answers to any questions about the governmental issues. For example we do
not need to go anywhere or wait in the queues to ask a simple question anymore.
This yields an increased level of participation to the government, which can be
considered as a large technological system.
Latter result can be considered as a disadvantage
of e-government. Computerization makes every thing a nightmare for some of the
users. For example some clients especially the older clients, still goes to
banks while they may easily do their banking operations from internet banking. E-government
would be an isolated system for such clients. On the other hand there is a
level of foreign technology settlement in e-government which is again a source
of isolation.
Again from the perspective of systems approach,
there are the seamless webs in e-government. For example, how do we decide, do
we decide by technical necessities or do we decide by social necessities? Does
our use of technology shapes our governance or our governances shape our use of
technology? So there are some power relations between these two main entities
which is impossible to show in actor network theory. We should not forget that,
technology has limits. And we should question, what should we do, if something
is necessary for our social, governmental, cultural structure and impossible
for our technological structure, should we insist of electronic version of
those issues or should we leave them to conventional ways. (There will be
examples of such problems on Turkey case). So we should be careful of seamless webs.
Another important issue about the reconfiguration
is the linearity. Consumers may think about the linearity of the e-government.
This idea is something about: “It is impossible use the same e-government
technology after 50 years, and this reconfiguration will be with small upgrades
and it is inevitable.”
Although there are lots of components that should be upgraded frequently, there
are quite enough number of components under e-government that may stay
unchanged. For example the security modules should be upgraded frequently
because hackers discovers new ways of attack and patching this vulnerabilities
is necessary, but upgrading the calculation of taxes does not need to be
upgraded, even if the tax rates changes. (here the word upgrade is used for the
replacement with new technology, if the tax rates changes, an operator updates
the new rates and system continue to work, there is no need for new technology).
So feeling the necessity of upgrades in whole system whether needed or not, yields
the linearity.
It is obvious that governing is a national issue
and by switching to electronic governance almost all of the “under development
countries” are effected and transformed to transnational systems, because of
their massively imported foreign technology components.
3.2.1.
E-Government
as a Large Technological System
From this point lets continue with the formal
definition of “evolution of large technological systems”, by Pinch(1987). We
should go into the definition of a large technological system to decide whether
e-government is a large technological system or not. The definition of large
technological system listed below:
- They contain messy,
complex, problem-solving components
- Socially constructed and
society shaping
- Contain: artifacts, groups,
processes, laws, and natural resources
- System components are
interactive and interdependent
- Components are created and
developed by "system builders"
e-government
is an extremely complex system from the view of a citizen. In fact e-government
is electrification of an already complex system, since most of the citizens
deals with governmental offices only when they really need to do. As we have
already declared the four levels of electronic governmental applications,
almost all of the governmental offices in Turkey have already accomplished the first level. So for
example web sites of governmental offices are a solution to the problem of
information flow for governmental processes. This flow of information is in fact
an accumulation by years. The e-government is only the electrification of this
flow. So if we consider the representative democracy as a loosely way of social
construction,
these flows and regulations are shaped by the society for many a long year in Turkey. On the other hand any project about e-government
is sunk enough to the artifacts, groups, processes and laws. The roles of
groups in e-government are already discussed in the chapter 3.1. Actors Network
Theory. The interesting thing in here is the laws. Any law about e-government
is in fact a law about another law since e-government is a kind of execution of
laws. So e-government effects the laws and e-government is under effect of
laws, and we can conclude that e-government fits the definition of large
technological system by the particles it holds just after touching the “system
builders”.
An
important detail about e-government is the direction of its applications. We
should raise the question: “What or who decides the direction of the
e-government?”. Answers may vary from group to group like, “technology”,
“government”, “engineers”, “citizens”, etc.
Answer
of this question is the main purpose of this chapter, since the power relation
in actor network theory is not enough to underline the realities.
Here it
is the rest of the definition of the large technological systems definition:
- Force unity from
diversity
- Deconstruction of
alternative systems
- Characteristics of
components derive from the system (power plant mix, i.e.
small-decentralized vs. Large-centralized, and management structure)
- Over time, technological
systems tend to incorporate environmental factors into the system-
eliminating uncertainty ("free market")
- They are goal oriented:
reordering of the material world to make it more productive.
- Workers are components
of they system, not artifacts, yet there is a tendency to define labor as
an inanimate component.
- Systems tend, over time,
towards a hierarchical structure.
- They have inputs and
outputs- these tend to be interlinked (internally and externally)
by the light of above items we can model the flow of
e-government as below diagram:
Figure 4: Ideal case for Turkish e-government
application
In the figure, the items below “E-Government
Interface”, represents the inner components which are isolated from the world.
The only hole which adds the system a “social” aspect is the “Social &
Judicial Inspections” component where citizens can interact with the system and
be a part of shaping the system. Unfortunately Turkey is poor of social
organizations. By the help of European Union convention, Turkish parliamentary
has accepted more flexible laws for the foundations, social organizations and
political parties. (2003 European Union
Progress Report)
From the definition we should ask the question: “do
we accept workers as a component of the system?”
Yes we do. While I have searched to prepare this
thesis, in any official
definition of e-government declared by a governmental department or office
concerned in Turkey, there is no approach
from the view of workers. The term “e-çalışan” which means “e-worker”
in Turkish, exists only in the documents of labor unions in Turkey.
Again from the definition, we should declare the
inputs and outputs of our large technological system in Turkey.
Inputs/Outputs:
- Data
to/from other governmental offices. (can be considered as internal
Input/Output)
- Demands
to/from whole world. (Reports, statistics, Operations in Foreign Ministry
like Visa,
or other operations served to the citizens)
- Technology
(For the Turkish case, it is locally shaped foreign technology. It is not
an output yet but just after the success stories in Turkey, some of the
Turkish companies may sell e-government solution whole around the world)
- Laws
(E-government should obey the related laws and an application of laws)
By its nature e-government is a hierarchical system
which is inherited from the hierarchical governmental structure in Turkey. A new hierarchical
structure is shaping by time inside the government. For example, almost all of
the governmental offices have departments assigned to electronic operations.
In the definition of centralization in large
technological systems, we can see both schemas (the large-centralized or
small-decentralized). We can draw the line between central government and local
governments in Turkey. In local government
offices we observe more decentralized and smaller systems whereas in central
government offices structure is more centralized and larger. In fact the
e-government structure in Turkey is shifting a more centralized and a larger
system, since all local and centralized government offices target a more
centralized more automated more consistent and finally a larger system, which
they believe creates a better e-government application. The source of this
belief is a progressive approach just coded in the society’s subconscious. The
belief of better and bigger technology is the next target. At this point we can
observe the linearity of levels as we have declared in Table 1. In the definition
of large technological system, we can place this subconscious with a goal
oriented approach.
After the critique about inputs and outputs of the
e-government in Turkey, let’s continue with the
phases of evolution. These phases are listed below (Pinch(1987)):
- Loosely defined pattern
- Reverse Salients
- Invention (radical
inventions spawn new systems)
- Development
(coordinating of necessary resources- economic, political, and social- for
the survival of the invention)
- Innovation (combining
inventions and developed components with a complex of manufacturing, sales
and service facilities)
- Technology Transfer
(diffusion and adaptation: McGinn- characteristics of the technology
itself, organization and networks, "opinion leaders,"
"value compatibility," "cult of the new")
- Technological Style
(individual creativity, geography, regional and historical experiences:
European vs. American automobiles)
- Growth, Competition, and
Consolidation
To make a better analyze we should go into the
details of history of e-government. We should also look at the history of
commercial web sites, since they have the initiative role in development of
electronic operations. The initial information
sharing over the Internet was holding static prose pages with no pictures or
colors. After the spreading of HTML, which relatively gives designers more
options, the necessity of web pages is increased. This is the loosely defined
pattern, which we face with the primitive implementations of electronic
government. Initially they were the static web pages prepared to announce the
operations of governmental offices. This was the first contact of web
technologies with the government offices. Operations run mostly over the e-mail
transactions and government offices launches static web pages.
Furthermore, web technologies are modified by the
demands of users. In the next generation the technology was capable of online
forms, simple server/client operations like JAVA applets or CGI. This new
technologies opens a new window of web programming, which enables programmers
to write online programs, online transactions and online information sharing.
Again the commercial implementations were the first initiative of technology.
Most of the B2B implementations started after the settlement of this
technology.
The technological achievements go on by the server
side scripting languages, online databases, and web services (which has started
to be actively settling about a year ago in Turkey). After these
achievements, companies have published their web sites including online
transactions. The banks as the initiative commercial entities have represented
these technologies to huge number of citizens. The great advantages of these
new technologies have created a demand for the development. Companies have
increased the security, usability, speed and reliabilities of the technologies
to have a bigger percentage in the market and cost reduction and profit
maximization and so on. These developments have created a more suitable
environment for the e-government implementations. In fact the whole necessary
technology in e-government is inherited from other online operations, which can
be proven by the name of companies who provide technology for both commercial
applications and e-government solutions. Of course the adaptation of these
technologies to the governmental operations is an example innovation in the
system. By the way, an already created technology is served in a different
market.
Our story goes on with the transfer of technology,
which is started before the innovation phase in our example. For example Turkey is not a source for the
inventions of today’s e-government technologies but all of the necessary
technologies were already transferred before the e-government applications. So
the innovation of e-government applications has coursed the technology
implementation companies (or other service providers) to the e-government
market.
On the other hand each society and each government
has different request from the e-government solutions which creates local
solutions. For example the government structure of US is more centric than the
Turkish government structure, which enables the US e-government solutions a
unique social security number for all of the operations, while Turkish citizens
carries different numbers for each of the governmental offices.
Of course the irresistible profits in the
e-government market, draws other companies to the market. For example JAVA was
the dominating platform which was supplied by many companies and big enough to
be a technology platform in e-government applications, has challenged by .Net,
the platform of Microsoft.
By the light of above information, we can conclude
that there is an evolution in the e-government technologies, while in fact it
was inherited and innovated from similar markets like internet banking.
E-government can be considered as a large technological system and it does
evolve and this creates the danger of technological determinism.
3.2.2.
Technological
Determinism
Besides the systems approach, as a technological
system, we can find the foot prints of technological determinism. Bimber(1994)
defines the three faces of technological determinism as below:
|
Normative
|
Nomological
|
Unintended Consequences
|
|
Autonomous approach.
Influence on history where societies
attach cultural and political meaning to it.
|
Naturalist approach.
Given the past and the laws of
nature, there is only one possible future.
|
Fuzzy approach
Uncontrollability and uncertainty
yields the changes
|
|
Technological Society
|
Steam-mill is follows the hand-mill
not by chance but because it is the next stage in a technical conquest of
nature
|
Automobile is cleaner than horse, but
environmental disadvantages of automobiles are unknown while it is first
invented.
|
In the normative approach which is from Habermas’s
critique, we can see the effects of cost, upgrade, mechanization and
optimization dimensions.
Turkish society believes the necessity of upgrades optimization and cost
reduction, which an obvious result on the inquiry.
The second interpretation, the nomological one,
again fits the Turkish society case because of the awareness of alternatives
and effective parameters. Which is a tragic reality for even government
offices, that is why Turkey is lack of national operating system or office
applications.
Finally the third approach fits the shape of
society because of the unconcern of society to the technology, or this case can
be interpreted as the society which is helpless against the technology. In
either case the result is same society has nothing to do with the technology.
By the three interpretations above, we can summary
that, the Turkish society is deterministic in e-government applications.
3.3.
social
constructivism of e-government (SCOT model)
The identification
mark of social constructivism, in general, is that society and technology are
viewed as constructed through negotiation between different social actors,
groups or worlds. Technology and society are regarded as intertwined, which
means that the impacts of technology and science on society are studied as well
as the other way around (Harvey, F.
and Chrisman, N. (1998)).
The constructivist
approaches base their theories on criticism of, amongst other things,
technological determinism. What is criticized is the way technology is
considered, namely as a determinant for society. This fosters a linear way of
thinking, according to the constructivist theoreticians. In their view
technology has no autonomous character; this implies that technological changes
are results of social processes (Bijker,
B. (1995)).
In SCOT the developmental process of a
technological artifact is a “multidirectional” model, in contrast with the
linear models used explicitly in many innovation studies and implicitly in much
history of technology. [7]
So the social constructivism of e-government can be
basically defined as the construction of an e-government technology by the
citizens. Since we are working on the Turkey case, we are against the question of is there a
constructivism of e-government by the citizens?
To answer this question, we should check the social
awareness and governmental documentation about the subject. Besides the
rhetoric speeches of political parties about the e-government in Turkey, we are lack of simplified documents for public
awareness. The most open documents are located on the Internet and most of them
are only suitable for researchers and foreign inspectors. For example in the
document of prime ministry, which is 79 pages long, there is a detailed explanation
of current e-government applications and further plans.
After this definition we should raise the question:
“is there multidirectional model in e-government?”. Answer is yes. We found
more than 20 different technologies implemented and working in Turkey. In fact this may yield the inconsistency if all
technological systems are adopted in a single country, but it yielded a
multidirectional way of handling problems.
In SCOT, ‘relevant social groups who play a role in
the development of a technological artifact are defined as this groups who share
a meaning of the artifact. This meaning can then be used to explain particular
developmental paths. (Ronald Kline and Trevor Pinch(1996))
In SCOT, of course another important issue is the participation
(deciding the shape of technology) of “relevant social groups”.
We have defined the relevant social groups of
e-government in Turkey, in the actors network chapter. By the nature of SCOT, these social
groups should be involved from the beginning of the technological achievements,
but unfortunately we are lack of necessary social groups to be a part of the
e-government. In fact, the regulations from the EU, creates a huge gap which
opens a suitable window for NGOs or other social groups, but in Turkey this gap is mostly filled by the press. Most of
the debates go on the television and radio programs, with quite enough number
of participants.
Of course the reason of this unconcern has numerous
reasons which are out of the scope of this thesis, but from the SCOT’s point of
view, we can conclude that, the e-government technologies has almost no social
construction.
4.
Conclusion
In this thesis study, we have tried to place
e-government applications in Turkey to the several theories of science technology and
society studies. In actors network theory, we have declared the actors and
stated the relations between actors. The “unlisted actors” are very interesting
as well as the “listed actors”. On the other hand we have found and declared
the focal actors, the ignition and the effected actors. In the model of large
technological systems, we have faced an almost complete fit to the model. So
our case study will most probably be shaped and evolved in the same way of
large technological systems. While modeling our case study in these theories we
have also faced the grievous realities such as technological determinism,
progressive and linear approaches and the subconscious of
developed/underdeveloped countries both in the related documents and inquiry
takers.
5.
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Appendices
Appendix I
Some of the e-government applications from turkey.
Please note that the information inside the
brackets are only for the Internet users (citizen to government operation type).
Almost all of these sites have an intranet interface which can be accessed by
internal users for government to government operations. Turkey has more than 250 e-government sites, and we have
only listed the some of the most important sites.
- OSYM (Öğrenci
Seçme ve Yerleştirme Merkezi – Selection and Placement of Students in Higher Education Institutions
in Turkey) (level 3, online queries, personal id numbers and
personal queries, serving more than 2,500,000 students each year)
- SSK (Sosyal
Sigortalar Kurumu- Social Security Organization) (level 4, online
transactions for both employees and employers. Each user has own id number
for operations which is also the social security number)
- Anayasa (www.anayasa.gov.tr) (constitution, informative
site)
- Yargitay (http://www.yargitay.gov.tr/) (Supreme
Court, informative site with enhanced query abilities)
- Emniyet Genel
Mudurlugu (General Directorate of Security Affairs) (http://www.egm.gov.tr) (level 4, online
operations, queries and application forms. Citizens can use online forms
to access their passport, driving license or vehicle information. There
are also valuable criminal statistics about Turkey.)
- Merkez Bankasi (http://www.tcmb.gov.tr/) (informative
site)
- Gelirler Genel
Mudurlugu (http://www.gelirler.gov.tr)
(level 3, online transactions, personal queries, tracking the personal
taxes or commercial taxation, also online payments options for some of the
taxes)
- Ministries (All
of the ministries are level 2 or upper because of the information
gathering rights approved and became law by the Turkish parliamentary,
which is related to the transparency requirements in European Union
Convention)
- Prime ministry
(Basbakanlik, http://www.basbakanlik.gov.tr/,
level 2, informative site, contains information and regulations about
electronic transformations. Guide to other ministries, E-signature,
e-Turkey, etc.)
- Parliamentary
(TBMM, http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/,
level 2, a huge portal full of information, also email transactions).
- Ministry of
Justice, (Adalet bakanligi, http://www.adalet.gov.tr/,
level 3, a huge portal and online transactions like querying criminal
reports and statistics. Also contains more than 10 web sites connected to
the main portal)
- Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, (Disisleri Bakanligi, http://www.mfa.gov.tr/,
level 3, informative site that contains, military obligation operations,
notary or citizenship operations)
- Ministry of Culture,
(Kultur ve Turizm Bakanligi, http://www.kultur.gov.tr,
level 2, contains information about the ministry work and email
transactions. This portal also contains e-learning site of Turkish
language.
- Ministry of National
Defense, (Milli Savunma Bakanligi, http://www.msb.gov.tr/,
level 3, a huge portal, email transactions and also personal
transactions. For example citizens can query the status of their military
obligations)
- Ministry of
Finance (Maliye Bakanligi, http://www.maliye.gov.tr/,
level 3, a portal enhanced by statistical information, e mail
transactions and personal queries. For example a citizen can query
his/her tax number (a number which is necessary for almost all of the
financial transactions (banking, sales, purchasing, etc.) and government
uses this number to track the amount annual tax of citizens)
- Ministry of
Transportation and Communication (Ulastirma Bakanligi, http://www.ubak.gov.tr/, level 4, one
of the most advanced sites of Turkish ministries. Information, email
transactions and online queries are exists in the portal. Besides,
citizens can query, all kinds of certificates of transportation vehicles.
For example getting information about a maritime unit is possible in the
portal. On the other hand, ministry still continue to work as a private
company by operating trains or planes. Portal also contains departure
times or online ticket reservation and selling pages. Another interesting
part of site is about the communication services. Anybody can learn the
phone number of someone by inserting name and address information, or can
reverse query the owner of telephone number. (which can be considered as
lack of privacy and success story for transparency )
Appendix II
E-government, from the
organizations that Turkey is a candidate or member.
From e-europe action plan 2001:
“At the European Ministerial Conference held in
Warsaw on 11-12 May 2000, Central and Eastern European Countries recognized the strategic goal set
by the EU-15 in Lisbon
and agreed to embrace the challenge set by the EU-15 with eEurope and decided to launch an “eEurope-like
Action Plan” by and for the
Candidate Countries as a compliment to the EU political commitments in order to
try and broaden the base for achieving the ambitious above mentioned goal. In
February 2001, the European Commission invited Cyprus, Malta and Turkey to join the other candidate countries in defining
this common Action Plan.
Our
initiative, which we name eEurope+, mirrors the priority objectives and targets of eEurope but provides for actions which tackle the specific
situation of the Candidate Countries. It should not be perceived as a substitute
for or interfering with accession negotiations.
Like eEurope, the eEurope+ Action Plan aims to accelerate reform and
modernisation of the economies in the candidate countries, encourage capacity and institution building,
improve overall competitiveness and provide for actions which address the
specific situation of the Candidate Countries.“
Besides the above orientation of European Union,
eEurope 2005 (which is declared on 2002) defines the target as listed below:
“By 2005, Europe should have:
– modern online
public services
e-government
e-learning services
e-health services
– a dynamic
e-business environment and, as an enabler for these
– widespread
availability of broadband access at competitive prices
– a secure
information infrastructure” , eEurope(2002)
In the eEurope 2005 action plan, council also
suggests the mid-term reviews because of the new members. Another important
issue in the action plan is the skilled employees. The below paragraph request
a statistical study for the employment requirements. Although DPT prepares such
reports before the European Union request, such plans make those reports more
meaningful and practical studies:
“e-skills. By
end 2003, the Commission, in close co-operation with Member States, will
publish an analysis of the supply and the demand for e-skills in Europe. The Commission and Member States should foster public-private partnerships and the co-operation of
stakeholders with a view to developing European-wide e-skills definitions.“,
eEurope(2002)
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In short:The Commission has proposed that Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey follow the 10 future EU
members in joining the Union's programme for the exchange
of data with EU Member States' administrations (IDA).
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Brief news:IDA's
(interchange of data between administrations) mission is to support the
implementation of EU policies and activities by co-ordinating the
establishment of Trans-European telematic networks between administrations.
In April 2003, Slovenia, Poland, Czech Republic, Malta, Estonia and Cyprus were the first among the candidate countries to
sign Memoranda of understanding with the European Commission, formalising
their participation in the IDA Programme. Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia are expected to sign a Memorandum of
Understanding soon.
Increasing data exchange is expected to accelerate the candidate
countries' take-up of EU legislation before they formally join the EU. The
programme also aims at helping the future Member States integrate into the Union's internal market, create an enlarged area of freedom, security and
justice and provide online government services to citizens and companies.
IDA's 25 million euro work programme for 2003 takes into account the
needs of the candidate countries. The candidate countries will have to bear
the costs of their participation in IDA. However, they will be able to use
some PHARE and pre-accession funds for that purpose.
To date, most candidate countries were involved as observers in several
IDA working groups of national experts, responsible for areas such as network
security and e-Government portals. Also, information events have been held in
several candidate countries, and other events are being organised to raise
awareness of how the IDA Programme works and how candidates can take part.
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