T. C. Sayıştay Başkanliği

Turkish Court of Accounts (TCA)
1 Strategic project - Background

"In compliance with the objectives specified by the EU in the course of transforming to an information society; the e-Transformation of Turkey Project (eDTr) was initiated in 2003 and within the framework of this project, it is stipulated that several public services are to be provided in an electronic environment."

"With the impetus created by the eDTr Project and the Law on Right of Information put into effect in 2004; the number of the web sites owned by the public institutions and organizations is rapidly increased and has reached to 8115 as of January."

2 Standards not implemented - Website

"deficiencies found out on the public web sites are mostly due to the fact that the minimum standards for the public web sites have not yet been established and an implementation-control mechanism regarding these standards is not formed."

3 Information security

"Although an insufficiency in this matter shall have adverse affects on all the e-government services and has the risk to decrease the demand; the number of the institutions which has an information security policy document approved by the high administration of the institution and made a risk analysis study comprising a data processing infrastructure is very few."

"This situation indicates that an awareness regarding the importance of the security of information has not yet been created and an information security policy can not be established."

Establishment of information security policy by each and every public institutions and ensuring them to take measures that will eradicate the deficits on security of the web sites should be achieved. (1)
4 Updates decide - Maintenance

"Updating the Web Sites and Measuring the Frequency of Visitors: Nowadays, the up-to-date information is important as much as the easy and rapid access to information."

"In the cases where the citizens make some transactions by using the information given on the web sites that are not updated; this may lead to undesirable problems and decrease the demand of the citizens to the services of e-government."

5 Handicapped users - Design

"in the areas of design and navigation which are important in terms of practicality and surfing and based on the technical skills; relatively better results are taken"

"The biggest deficiency about accessibility is that the web sites are not usable for the blind."

The conformity of the public web sites to the standards of design, navigation and accessibility and especially content should be maintained in order to ensure the public web sites to provide rapid, interactive, secure, appropriate and practical services with all kinds of browsers. (2)
6 Benefits to be maximized

"Realization of the projects in the field of information technology requires both a comprehensive planning process and high costs."

"For this reason, the benefits that are to be obtained thorough the implementation of the project should be maximized not just institutionally but as a whole so as to comprise all the public institutions."

in order to conform the public web sites with the standards, to prevent the technological dependency and make saving in the procurement of technologies; a structure should be built which shall determine the measures that should be taken, update the standards, provide technical support to the institutions and finally contribute to the quality of the services (3)
Objectives

The objective of the audit is to ensure that the measures are taken in order to establish a mechanism which shall;

- Decrease the red tape in the public institutions and strengthen the capacity of delivery of electronic services (e-Services) in a fast, high quality and secure manner,

- Determine and update the standards on public web sites and monitor their implementation,

- Evaluate at certain intervals whether the service having the features such as appropriate content and design and easy usage and functionality and, which takes into account the needs and preferences of the public, is delivered or not on public web sites.

- Ensure that the corrective measures are taken on due time,

- Give technical support to the institutions.

The items above were selected and named by the e-Government Subgroup of the EUROSAI IT Working Group on the basis of publicly available report of the author Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI). In the same way, the Subgroup prepared the analytical assumptions and headings. All readers are encouraged to consult the original texts by the author SAIs (linked).