Abstract
OPEN GOVERNMENT DATA APPLICATIONS IN TURKISH PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: A STUDY ON METROPOLITAN MUNICIPALITY PORTALS
This study examines open government data technology in terms of public administration and analyzes open government data applications in the Turkish public administration. Open government data refers to the open, accessible and reusable data that public institutions and organizations share with the public. In recent years, developed countries have made significant investments in open data technology. Open data technologies provide many benefits to organizations such as reducing bureaucratic costs, participation, effectiveness, economic growth, new employment opportunities and energy savings. In our study, firstly, the open government data works of some institutions and organizations at the central government level and municipalities at the local government level in Turkey are presented. The open data portals of three municipalities, namely Istanbul, Izmir and Bursa Metropolitan Municipalities, are examined and an analysis of their open data efforts is presented. Data opening activities at the central government level are presented chronologically from past to present in legal and institutional terms. The open data sets of the relevant metropolitan municipalities were examined in detail and the data were analyzed in terms of subject, category, content and number. Literature analysis was adopted as the primary data collection method. The sources utilized in this direction are municipal activity reports, municipal strategic plans, official websites of municipalities, IT departments that set up the portal, and municipal news sources. Secondly, the official websites of the municipalities were utilized to examine their open data sets. The open data sets of the relevant metropolitan municipalities were examined in detail and the data were analyzed in terms of subject, category, content and number. Finally, an analysis of the portals of the relevant municipalities is presented and the data obtained from this analysis is evaluated in the evaluation section. As a result of the study, it was seen that the scope of open data applications at the central and local government levels in our country is narrow and progress is slow. Reasons such as the fact that open data portals have only recently been established, the persistence of attitudes such as closeness, rigidity and normativity in institutions, lack of technical teams and personnel, and local administrators’ distant approach to the subject due to reasons such as time and cost, have been noted as obstacles to the advancement of open government data technology.
Keywords
open data, open government data, open government data in Turkish public administration, open governm
