Service Delivery of Municipalities within the Context of E-Governance and the Factors Affecting Municipality-Citizen Interaction: The Case of Kocaeli Province

E-governance, which has begun to gain importance since information and communication technologies affected public administration styles closely, is a citizen-oriented sense of management based on an interaction via new communication technologies between public enterprises and shareholders. Municipalities, the most important representatives of the public service delivery at the local level, use new media technologies in business processes within the scope of e-governance and thus, attain a more productive working opportunity with less cost, provide an easy, rapid and healthy service and receive feedback from the citizens concerning different matters. In order to develop and maintain e-governance applications which provide positive acquisitions to municipalities and citizens in such a way that they are useful for both sides, it is required to determine the factors that affect the service delivery and mutual interaction. This study was prepared via findings acquired from the TUBITAK SOBAG-117K012 research project, which examines the services delivered by the provincial and district municipalities of Kocaeli in the new media in terms of municipalities and citizens within the frame of e-governance. In the study, semi-structured profound interviews were conducted with 26 participants working in 13 municipalities in the province of Kocaeli to determine the factors affecting service delivery and citizen interaction of provincial and district municipalities within the scope of e-governance. As a result of the study, it was determined that the factors affecting the service provided by municipalities in the new media within the scope of e-governance and the municipality-citizen interaction were; problems arising from technical infrastructure, confidentiality and security, digital skill and budget absence and the results were discussed accordingly