Prioritization of e-Government strategies using a SWOT-AHP analysis: the case of Turkey

Abstract

The e-Government agenda is being pursued throughout the world to one degree or another, but it has added significance in Central Europe. The region is just beginning to emerge from a period of far-reaching political and economic transformation following the collapse of repressive communist systems. For these countries, e-Government is more than simply a new channel of delivering services; it offers an opportunity to achieve a quantum leap in transparency and efficiency of administration, which the region's leaders have promised their citizens since the early 1990s. Turkey is currently working hard to catch this opportunity. Turkish Government has initiated the Urgent Action Plan in December 2002 to remedy long-lasting economic problems and to improve social and well-being of the country. One of the basic components of this plan is ‘e-Transformation Turkey Project’ which aims to carry Turkey into Information society. One of the two purposes of this study is to define and to prioritize the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) groups and their subfactors for e-Government in Turkey. The other purpose is to determine and to evaluate the alternative strategies for e-Government applications at the national level in Turkey. We use the SWOT approach in combination with analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to achieve this task. The strategies have been prioritized and sensitivity analyses of the obtained results have been made using a software.

Keywords:

• e-Government
• SWOT
• analytic hierarchy process
• strategic planning
• sensitivity analysis

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cengiz Kahraman

About the authors

Cengiz Kahraman is a professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering of Istanbul Technical University (ITU). He received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering from ITU in the years 1988, 1990, and 1996, respectively. His research areas include engineering economics, statistical decision making, quality engineering and management, fuzzy sets, and applications. He is the editor of a Springer book entitled ‘Fuzzy Applications in Industrial Engineering’ and the guest-editors of many international journals. He has published many papers in Information Sciences, International Journal of Production Economics, and International Journal of Intelligent Systems. He is now editing two Springer books on fuzzy multicriteria decision-making and fuzzy engineering economics.

Nihan Çetin Demirel

Nihan Cetin Demirel is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. She received her B.Sc. (1991) degree from the Industrial Engineering Department of Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey. She received her M.Sc. (1994) and Ph.D. (1999) degrees in Industrial Engineering from Yildiz Technical University. Her research interests include the areas of supply chain management, ergonomics, strategic management, fuzzy sets and applications, quality management, and multiple criteria decision-making. She has published several national and international conferences papers, and journal papers.

Tufan Demirel

Tufan Demirel is an assistant professor at Yildiz Technical University, Department of Industrial Engineering. He received his B.Sc. (1989) degree from the Industrial Engineering Department of Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, and M.Sc. (1993) and Ph.D. (1999) degrees in Industrial Engineering from the same university. His main research areas are logistics management, system modeling, fuzzy sets and applications, and operations research. He has published various national and international conferences papers, and journal papers.