A New Society with e-technologies

October edition of Bilgi Cagi magazine takes the issue of e-technologies in the society. The magazine has noted that providing the use of information and communication technologies is the way of transition to information society. According to The Economist Intelligence Unit report Turkey is in a deadlock about the use of information and communication technologies. And the solution has defined as focusing on the needs about e-applications.

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Joao da Silva, the Director of European Commission Information Society and Media Directorate-General, states that with advances in recent years Turkey has come close to the average European contries about e-technologies. But he adds the folllowing important point: Turkey is better for the services offered to institutions but it is under the average of Europen about services offered to citizen. Therefore, Turkey has to focus on the needs of citizens.

In her October article, Leyla Arsan, the CEO of TAGES, mentions eChallenges 2009 Conference which took place between 21 and 23 October in The Marmara Hotel, Istanbul. She states that this important Conference which is about e-applications and technologies will help to transfer information from European ICT industry. Also she emphasizes that we have to provide further participation to these studies as a country and international collaborations about technology R&D in European Union integration process is strongly needed. She points out that our software industry which is developing many different applications in e-business industry has to both contribute to generalize this kind of studies in themselves and contribute to the EU projects or studies; so that the results of these studies will benefit both the industry and the country.

According to analysis of the chemicals and plastics, steel, furniture, retail, transportation and logistics and banking, when the institutions use more ICT solutions, they become more ready for another innovative ICT solution and employees’ skills increase in ICT field. So that employees’ productivity is increasing and institutions’ turnover is growing.

In addition to this, Arsan states that according to a study which was made in 7 of the largest EU countries in 2007, the companies using the e-business less than the others gather the reasons of the non-use of e-business applications in three groups.

Suppliers or customers are not ready for e-business
Company is too small to benefit from e-business activities
e-business technologies are very expensive

According to Arsan, the situation in our country is that we don’t have a habit of adopting participating, supranational, democratic and new technologies. And also there is no approach like that. We are really forced in EU support and funding procedures. We prefer to focus on making money in a very short-term process and do not have any relations with developments.

In the last part of her article, Arsan states that Information Society Agency is not democratic. For information society it is predicting to take decisions from one central agency and implement quickly but this agency which does not overlap with our country’s democratic structure and today’s system of EU. And she asks that how we could establish a community which is integrated with EU and more democratic and how we could implement this with Information Society Agency. Also Mehmet Akyelli, the Chairman of Software Council in The Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey, clearly explains their criticisms of the draft law about Information Society Agency. He states that Information Society Agency is not participating because of its existing structure.

Finally Arsan offers:

Information Society Agency must be designed as a more horizontal structured and this agency must achieve a shape which puts all relevant stakeholders together at the same level and contributes to decision making.
Turkish ICT developers must participate in EU ICT R&D communities and the system which will be established in Turkey must be compatible and interactive with this system.
The institutions which are developing ‘e’ projects must come together and share the project results within themselves and also share the project results with the public
Instead of destroying established structures and set up new ones to replace them, it will be more meaningful and useful to democratize and enhance the structures which function and compose the sector like e-Transformation Executive Committee. Single decision and application-centric and purely tied to the government structures are detrimental to our country’s democratization process.