E-Government Gateway Development in Turkey: Some Challenges and Future Directions for Citizen Focus

Introduction

Masterminding a single website, which can be referred to with various names such as One-Stop-Shops, Gateways, Portals, with its front and back office operations for the provision of government services to citizens’ and other stakeholders who use information and communication technologies (ICT) is a recent trend and focus in e-Government practice and academic research. As a part of this trend, Turkey has initiated its own project to establish an E-Government Gateway (EGG).

In this chapter, the main aim is to elaborate on the development of EGG in Turkey by describing some challenges that have been experienced, lessons learned from the past, and in addition enumerating some current prospects and suggestions for the future. Taking into account some basic characteristics and shortcomings of the Turkish public administration system, the chapter will make an evaluation of EGG. A specific focus of the chapter will be on the public sector supply of e-Government services and citizen demand for current e-services provided by the EGG. It is hoped that the good practices, lessons-learned, suggestions and prospects regarding this EGG case will shed light on previous experience and pave the way for further progress for citizen-oriented e-Government development not only in Turkey but also in other nations.