Mobile Government in Turkey: Investigating Drivers and Barriers

1
Mobile Government in Turkey Investigating
Drivers and Barriers

• Anil Ustun(1), Ali Yazici(2), K. Ibrahim
  Akman(2), Ali Arifoglu(3)
• (1)Dept. of Engineering Management and Systems
  Engineering, Old Dominion Univ., USA
• (2) Atilim University, Dept. of Computer
  Engineering, Ankara, Turkey
• (3) Middle East Technical University, Institute
  of Informatics, Ankara, Turkey

2
Agenda

• Introduction
• Turkeys Readiness in Mobile Government
• A Case Study Determining M-Drivers and
  M-Barriers for Turkey
• Results
• Conclusions

3
Introduction

• The OECD (2003) defines e-gov as the use of
  information and communication technologies, and
  particularly the Internet, as a tool to achieve
  better government.
• M-gov is a new research area with respect to
  e-gov. (Kushchu and Kuscu (2003) defined m-gov as
  Strategy and its implementation involving the
  utilization of all kinds of wireless and mobile
  technology, services, applications and devices
  for improving benefits for citizens, business and
  all government units

4
Readiness

• In the UN e-Government Readiness Index for 2007,
  Turkey is assigned a rank of 42 out of a total of
  69 nations, a placement behind countries such as
  the Australia (9), South Korea (16), and Japan
  (18).
• Turkey is well-developed in the in both fixed and
  mobile technologies and it has a very large
  population with a mix of market segments.
• However, it is the only country that doesnt have
  3G licenses among European member or candidate
  countries.

5
Readiness

• In Turkey, use and development of mobile and
  wireless services by a critical mass is achieved.

6
Readiness

• The Turkish mobile market is currently home to
  three operators, Turkcell, Vodafone and Avea.
• The m-gov infrastructure still supports 2.5G
  services as of January 2006.
• At the start of 2007, Turkeys officials
  announced the introduction of MNP (Mobile Number
  Portability) for its 3 mobile operators,
  Vodafone, Turkcell and Avea.

7
Readiness

• Table 1. Household technology ownership in
  Turkey () (SSI, 2005)

8
A Case Study

• Identify the most significant m-drivers and
  m-barriers for m-gov in Turkey.
• A quantitative analysis through a total of 238
  completed survey questionnaires.
• The respondents of this survey were IT
  professionals from major government and private
  sector organizations who were the attendees of
  the meeting on issues in the use of IT in
  organizations, organized by the Turkish
  Informatics Society (TBD)

9
A Case Study

• Reviews and definitions of dependent factors can
  be seen below The dependent variables were
  categorized into two divisions as follows
• M-Drivers Move towards Mobile Government
  Applications
• M-Barriers Mobile Government Challenges

10
M-Drivers

• With reference to the potential field of
  application we consider nine main areas of
  content (Kushchu Kuscu, 2003)
• Local taxation Information channel for local
  residents, payment of house taxes, income taxes,
  etc.
• Personal Data Request/renewal of documents,
  certificates, changes of place of residence.
• Postal Services Postal notification service,
  etc.
• Education Application forms, payment of school
  taxes, test results, academic status, courses.
• Banking and Finance Stock exchange, fund
  exchange, banking services
• Security Crisis information channel, emergency
  services
• Health Reservation of hospital visits,
  monitoring vital parameters.
  
• Tourism Information channel for tourists, hotel
  reservations
  
• Social Security Pension information systems

11
M-Barriers

• The challenges and their definitions can be seen
  below (Kushchu Kuscu, 2003)
• Lack of technological infrastructure Increasing
  mobile infrastructure can be considered as a
  force in adopting mobile government activities.
• Low credit card penetration In developing
  countries, the number of persons with credit
  cards is too small when compared to the number of
  potential users for m-gov transactions.
• Security and privacy gaps Citizens have concerns
  about sending their credit card information over
  the mobile and wireless devices.
• Insufficient number of its users Citizens
  participation depending on socio-economic factors
  will play an important role in the success of
  mobile government.
• Citizen adaptation process Especially in the
  rural areas of developing countries, citizens
  adaptation to the mobile and wireless
  applications and services is an important factor
  to be successful in mobile government.
• Problems with laws and political process There
  is no clear legal status for mobile applications,
  no regulations and laws for online fillings,
  online signings, and on online taxable
  transactions.
• Compatibility of the mobile systems with the
  existing e-gov systems It may not be easy to
  integrate both systems in terms of
  functionalities and data administration.

12
Hypotheses

• We use a systematic and exploratory analysis
  approach to investigate the impact of demographic
  factors on selected m-gov driver and barrier
  factors.
• The demographic factors refer as independent
  variables and
• the selected drivers and barriers refer as
  dependent variables.
• Each empirical factor was extracted based on
  prior literature, and the corresponding
  hypotheses were made according to similar
  researches on demographic factors.

13
Hypotheses

• H1. Demographic parameters have impact on the
  mobile government applications.
• H2. Demographic parameters have impact on the
  mobile government challenges.

14
Research Design

• Each respondent was asked to evaluate the
  importance of each attribute through a five point
  Likert scale. According to this, all items were
  measured on a 5-point scale ranging from strongly
  agree (5) to strongly disagree (1), with (3)
  being neutral.
• The reliability of the multiple-item scales is
  high as coefficient alpha value accepted as 0.95.
  
• Gender, age, education information, and work
  experience (years) along with career information
  were also examined as they are accepted as
  independent variables.
• First of all, we compare the mean of one or more
  groups based on one independent variable (or
  factor) by using the One-Way ANOVA. In the
  discussion section, important findings are
  supported by the Pearson Chi-Square test.

15
Results Respondant Information
Figure 2. Demographic factors
16
Willingness to use m-gov services
Figure 3. Preferred mobile government services
17
Challenges for m-gov
Figure 4. Mobile Government challenges
18
ANOVA Test Results

• Personal attitudes towards Mobile Government
  Drivers
• Gender has significant impact on Local Taxation
  and Banking Finance
• Age has significant impact on the Education,
  Health and Social Security

19
Referred services by gender
Figure 5. Referred services by gender of
respondents
20
Referred services by age
Figure 6. Referred services by age of respondents
21
Personal attitudes towards m-gov barriers

• Gender factor has significant impact on the
  Security and Privacy Gap, and occupation factor
  has significant impact on Problems with Laws and
  Political Process.

22
Perceived challenges by gender
Figure 7. Perceived challenges by gender of
respondents
23
Perceived challenges by age
Figure 8. Perceived challenges by age of
respondents
24
Discussions (Gender)

• Our study indicates that, gender has significant
  impact on the some of the preferred m-gov
  services to be seen in future.
• Male respondents are more likely to prefer local
  taxation (mean 4.17) (Table 2 H111) and,
  banking finance (mean 3.69) (Table 2 H151)
  services than female respondents (mean 3.80 and
  mean 3.17) as seen in Figure 5.
• Our explanation of this result may be that,
  majority workers in these fields are men in
  Turkey.

25
Discussions

• Another implication is that gender also affects
  security and privacy (Table 3 H231) challenge.
  
• Female respondents (mean 4.27) are more fragile
  in this issue as well than male respondents
  (mean 3.93).
• However, this finding is not supported by the ?2
  test results (?2 7.59, df 3, p-value
  0.055), that there is not significant
  relationship between gender and security and
  privacy challenge

26
Discussions (Age)

• The test results indicated that age has
  significant impact on specific factors as seen in
  Anova Tables.
• In terms of 3G mobile application services, age
  has impact on education and social security
  as seen in Anova Tables.
• Younger aged group of respondents (mean 4.28)
  are more willing to see education services than
  older aged group
• Secondly, age has impact on social security as
  seen in Figure 6, however, it is interesting to
  note that the relationship between age and the
  reason for social security was not found to be
  significant

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Discussions (Education Occupation)

• Surprisingly, we have investigated that education
  has no significant impact on none of our
  dependent factors as seen in Anova Tables.
• Occupation has significant impact on one of the
  mobile government challenges Problems with law
  and political process
• IT managers (mean 4.28) perceive political
  process as more challenging factor while other
  group of respondents (mean 3.85) perceive it
  less challenging.

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Discussions (Years of Experience)

• There were no significant association for m- gov
  driver and barrier factors in this category.

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Conclusions

• Purpose of this survey was to examine most
  significant drivers and barriers of the m-gov and
  impact of demographic factors on these driving
  and challenging factors among IT-oriented
  respondents in Turkey.
• The analysis revealed that, Health (mean 4.65)
  fields of m-gov is the most critical field that
  should be primarily developed in Turkey.
• We observed that the most significant barriers to
  the adoption of m-gov services will be the
  Problems with laws and political process (mean
  4.10) and Security and privacy gaps (mean
  4.03).
• On the other side, we observed that gender and
  age were the key factors for the tendency towards
  selected m-gov drivers and barrier factors.

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References

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