Language:
Search
 

Republic of Turkey Ministry of Interior Department of Information Technologies
Turkey

The Problem

Republic of Turkey Ministry of Interior, which is responsible for providing homeland security and public order, ensuring public peace, managing the general administration of the provinces, supervising the local administrations as the tutelage authority acting on behalf of the central administration and helping these local administrations improve, carrying out the civil registration and citizenship procedures, accomplishes these crucial duties through its central and provincial organizations. Ministry of Interior constitutes of 21 Central Units, 81 Governorates, 81 Special Provincial Administrations and 892 Districts. There are 45.840 ministry staff employed in these institutions.

Since the responsibilities are far too much thanks to large and connected units and wide duty range in addition to fact that most of these responsibilites concerns more units than one, the problems of managing its data and work flows were affecting the efficient and productive fulfillment of the responsibilities with the wide range of duty in central and provincial units.

There had been problems in work processes, information-based decision making processes, extensive and effective use of information and communication technologies which prevent the quicker, safer, efficient and productive delivery of the services that Ministry offers to citizens and business world. The lack of interdepartmental integration and inter-agencies communication, the lack of adequate, meaningful, up-to-date and secure data collection processes and infrastructures that meet the requirements in a common database could cause repetitions in process and procedures. Lack of a central database and difficulty to acess common, up-to-date and accurate information for units had been affecting the quality of the services; the efficient use of time for service providers and beneficiaries and the efficient use Ministry sources. Problems such as lack of data in the procedures of central units, special provincial administrations, governorate-district governorates and primarily in the official correspondence processes; data input; repeated procedures; reportings; central data management and the most importantly, timing issues were frequently encountered.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
For the purposes like establishing the Ministry of Interior’s own infrastructure during the period of e-Turkey transformation, reaching the Ministry structure level that has transferred its services to informatics environment, making use of the public sources efficiently anf effectively by providing all the software requirement of all central and provincial units of Ministry and special provincial units through single system; it was ensured that the process and procedures of 21 central units of Ministry of Interior, 81 Governorates, 81 Special Provincial Administrations and 892 district governorates are carried out in electronical environment.

It is considered that the project has these advantages below:

• Costs of time, communication and personnel are retrenched by providing the public and citizens with that important service through a central system without the necessity of separate investments of each governorate in order to complete the transition to e-government services.
• High costs for maintenance of separately operating softwares and security of every single information on the established database are prevented.
• Communication costs of Ministry of Interior which has intense data and work flow between central and provincial units are minimized. Economization has been accomplished thanks to reduces in paper, envelope, toner and posting costs. Considering that the project is given to other ministries free-of-charge, they will also achieve saving by not making same expenses.
• Quicker and cheaper delivery of citizen-oriented services will contine with extended e-government implementations.

The project is used by 45.739 ministry personnel now. The developed project has reached 114 modules, 2750 interfaces, 3.5 million codeline, 5 TeraBytes data volume and process rate of 1395 per second. by now. There has been 80 GB data increase weekly.

Through the electronical document management system which is the most actively used module; 10.000.000 incoming, 4.000.000 outgoing documents are registered into system and 62.500.000 actions (initials, signature, transfer, post, etc.) are processed on them. Average annual e-signature process number is 10.000.000.

Thanks to the electronical document management system being just one of the modules in project, it became possible to complete all the processes of a document in just 5 minutes unlike the previous at least 3 days period from issuance to receiver. In addition to that, 10 Million $, with a rough calculation, are saved annually, only with the use of electronical document management system. It is also believed that the other public institutions which were given the project free of charge experience the savings according to the rate of their correspondences. Furthermore, it was facilitated for supervisors with signing authority to carry out their proceedings non-spatially with the implementation of mobile signature application.

Numerical scales such as “User numbers”and “usage status”, “process numbers”, “electronical signature and initials status”, processes, incoming and outgoing “document numbers” are reported, published and viewed as periods like instantly, weekly, monthly and annually. After the evaluations on whether the modules are being used or not, the reasons are investigated. Besides; dynamic, detailed and visual reportings are ensured to be made with Decision Support Module developed in the scope of institutional Business Intelligence Project.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
e-Interior Project was initiated upon the circular no:93 and dated 24.05.2004 of Ministry of Interior and implemented by Ministry of Interior Department of Information Technologies in line with the target and actions pointed out in the Information Society Strategy and Annex Action Plan published as Higher Planning Council Decision no:2006/38 in Official Journal no:26242 dated 28/07/2006. Management and follow-up of developed applications with help desk and call center are also carried out by Department of Information Technologies.

The stakeholders of that project can be described as Ministry of Interior’s 21 central units, 81 governorates, 21 special provincial administration, 892 district governorates and the citizens. Public services are performed in electronical environment effectively with the modules that were developed for each unit privately.

e-Interior Project is a project from which also external stakeholders are benefited. For example; a study plan was prepared for processes of supporting e-Interior Project developed by Republic of Turkey Ministry of Interior giving it away to Tunisian Ministry of Interior in the scope of Turkey & Tunisia e-government cooperation. Ministry of Interior Department of Information technologies paid a pre-analysis visit to Tunisia in order to detect the current situation and needs.


Additionally, codes were given to; Ministry of Labour and Social Security (28.05.2010), Ministry of Culture and Tourism ( 31.01.2011 ) ,Undersecretary of Public Order and Security (20.09.2011), General Directorate of PTT (15.11.2011), Ankara Metropolitan Municipality General Directorate of EGO (23.12.2011), Sakarya Metropolitan Municipality General Directorate of Water and Sewerage Administration (30.03.2012) with dated protocols as free for charge.

Test application and detailed documentation have been forwarded to Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Ministry of Health being chosen as pilot organizations in the scope of Highway Project. The integration processes of pilot organizations to e-Interior system are still in progress.

Project preparations were started in 2010 by Ministry of Development Department of Information Society and within the scope of the contract of private provider signed in February 2011 the Turkish Presidency; the Prime Minister's Office; the Ministry of Justice; the Ministry of Interior; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and; the Under-secretariat of the State Planning Organisation are assigned as pilot authorities.

The Citizen-oriented Services for citizens that are provided to different society parts who is a stakeholder of e-Interior Project are as below:

• Information
• Human Rights
• E-Petition
• E-Appointment
• Application Tracking
o Prospective District Governorate application (http://www. turkiye.gov.tr )
o Employment of Families of martyrs and veterans (http://www. turkiye.gov.tr )
o Neediness (widow and orphan) pension application (http://www. icisleri.gov.tr)
o Needy Relatives of public officials application tracking (http://www.icisleri.gov.tr)
o Needy Soldier Families application tracking (http://www. icisleri.gov.tr )

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
e-Interior Software Development and Maintenance Project is a e-government project that enables management, tracking and sustainability of not only the document proceedings but also all kinds of process and procedures of all units in electronical environment in the area of Ministry of Interior’s duty and responsibilities. E-Interior project is directly related to national plan and programmes, e-Transformation Turkey Project and Information Society Strategy.


Some strategies followed in the scope of project are:

• Extending the citizen oriented dimensions of application,
• Focusing on the R&D studies so that they can follow the developments in Information Technologies and apply them to Ministry applications.
• Test studies have been carried out for e-Interior Document Management System application to be able to conduct all correspondence with other institutions completely in electronic environment by means of the set of rules included in e-Correspondence Project of Ministry of Development in which our ministry participated in as pilot institution.
• The status information of secret documents belonging to senior authorities, status information of application petitions that are in common service of citizens such as information and human rights and some important announcements for ministry personnel are planned to be informed via SMS(short message).
• Decision Support Module developed in the scope of Corporate Business Intelligence studies will be able to perform dynamic, detailed and visual reportings
• Transformation of data to the desired information will be provided with the use of business intelligence methods such as Executive Management Information system and Decision-Support System.
• Software and hardware infrastructure required for data communication between the institutions to be carried out in an efficient and secure way will be established.
• Conducting HSM secret document encryption studies serving for the purpose of increasing the security level in documents.
• Maintenance of current modules and development of new modules in line with the demands,
• Accelerating the studies on performance enhancement
• Providing diversity and order to project plan and reports with the use of Application Lifecycle studies,
• Making analysis, test and code automations.
• According to survey results, increasing the rate of module use and arranging the content, analysis and related materials of training
• Renovation of software system architecture in parallel with technological developments and in compliant to the current structure,
• Making the e-Interior Project appropriate for the TS 13298 Electronic Document Management System Standard
• Development of a mobile application so that e-Interior Software can be used in smartphones and tablet PC,
• Increasing functionality of mobile application interface by enhancing it with the additions like permission proceedings, notifications, documents waiting for signing, assignments, my information, document relay and taking note in sending phase, announcements, password change, phone book, personnel search.

Ministry of Interior Department of Information Technologies continues project studies in the light of these strategies above.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
Benefits:

• Public-to-public services in the framework of e-Turkey Information Society Action Plan: There are 144 modules in project provided for the process and procedures of Ministry of Interior central and provincial units. Contribution to e-government transformation was made through inter-institutional web service integrations, free-of-charge project sharing and pilot application studies of E-Correspondence Project that aims at integration of public agencies’ document management systems having different infrastructure.

• Paperless office practice: Document-based bureaucracy process gave its place to paperless office system. Registration, sending and confirmation phases that could last days and weeks before, are now resulting in seconds and minutes. In e-signature confirmation process, administrators can confirm and send many documents at once.

• Protection of energy and environment: 42.435.053 documents were archived with e-Interior project implemented in 2010. The fact that these process are carried out electronically corresponds to savings of 640 tons of paper, 10.000 trees, 726 decars woodland, 4.860.000 kws energy and 285.000 tons of water.


• Standardization and transparency of processes: Standardization is ensured by conducting and managing the process and procedures that are carried out same in all units through common modules. Thus, proceeding phases and tracking gets easier and obviousness and transparency in bureaucracy is obtained. Besides, retroactive 5 years’ documents were transferred to digital environment and integrated to system.


• Reportings of Ministry of Interior process and procedures: In the scope of business intelligence studies; related units prepare dynamic, detailed and visual reportings based on time, region, inventory for module data of their own process and procedures. Engaging business intelligence methods like Senior Authorities Information System, Decision Support System, it is ensured to transform the data to required information.

• Convenience for citizens to apply and track: Citizens can apply electronically to Ministry’s central and provincial organizations through e-petition module and track the application result and proceeding process online. Citizens can get an appointment from administrators in electronical environment.


• Facilitating the access to citizen and government: Infrastructure was established so that the the services offered by Ministry of Interior can be concluded in a safer, secure and economical way by transferring them to electronical environment and it entered into service with a citizen oriented service understanding. The applications within the scope of Citizen-Oriented Services can be made with mobile signature.


• Examination application : Applications for Prospective District Governor was accepted electronically in 2010 for the first time, thus 14.357 candidates in total could apply online form anywhere with no need to be in Ministry personally.


 Project was contracted out in 2005 and it was annulled in 2008 because it was not accepted in desired time.
 In March 2009, Department of Information Technology started to conduct the project with its own staff and still continues in this way.
 01.01.2010 with the circular dated 17 December 2009, the actual implementation of the project was started in central and provincial organization of Ministry of Interior.
 September 2010, the paperless office implementation was begun.
 November 2012, mobile signature integration was accomplished and pilot implementation has started.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
During application phase of the Project budget, qualified personnel, time, problems due to the formation of project’s own internal dynamics of the private sector training and project management were the main obstacles.

Solving the formation problems of internal dynamics by purchasing private sector service, managing the Project correctly, allocating the budget yearly, promoting education, assigning right sources in the right time were the methods.

The facts that analysis studies conducted with shareholders before module development lack required details, units are changing their requirements forwarded before and the changes in circumstances and legislations have negative effects on software development processes. Other main problems can be stated as the users are uneducated about information technologies and they are not examining the module help guides. These problems are solved with awareness trainings and call center supports.

Trainings:

e-Interior Project awareness trainings are provided for administratives, central units, project responsibles, users from governorate and district governorates. Guides and trainings about new applications are prepared and assessment and evaluation studies with surveys are conducted.
According to statistics; 46.915 personnel were provided wih trainings by Ministry of Interior Department of Information Technologies between 2006-2012 years since the start of e-Interior Project.


Call Center:

Help Desk (Call Center) was established in 2006 within Department of Information Technologies in order to solve the problems encountered in the modules within e-Interior Project, evaluate information demands and requests of 45,739 users work in Ministry Central Units, 81 Governorates, 81 Special Provincial Administrations and 892 District Governorates. It serves to all e-interior users with 19 personnel in duty.

Help Desk serving the duty of ‘call center’ functions as a bridge between users and the other branch offices and bureau of Department of Information Technologies. E-Interior users can reach Help Desk personnel via telephone, e-mail and formal letter as well as they can convey their error and request messages through “Report Request” module in e-Interior project.

Information Security:

For the purpose of ensuring protection of data integrity and confidentiality, control of access to data, system continuity and accessibility, in the scope of Information Security Management System (BGYS) studies with TUBITAK and the studies to make the system be accord with the ISO 27001 Standard are still being carried on. Information security also covers the objectives like identity authentication, undeniability, responsibility assignment, reliability. Password policies are developed by our Department for the purpose of delivering more secure service with the e-Interior system. Required infrastructure studies are completed in order to make the current passwords of all e-Interior users more secure in accordance with the Password Policy integrated with system in the context of Information Security. Secure password creation process was successfully accomplished by 45.739 e-Interior users till now. Password change process via SMS is ensured. Threats of insecure passwords on the system have been eliminated with the Password Policy that assures safer passwords. Making the certified entrance obligatory prevents the unserviceable passwords to remain insecure. Furthermore, a daily database backup system is being used.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Technical Resources:

The infrastructure of e-Interior Project was established using the most recent technologies and it is updated in accordance with the innovations in software area. The technology of project is ASP.NET4.0, software development language: C# 4.0, framework of study is .NET FrameWork 4.0. Work and data layer infrastructure is founded on WCF(Windows Communication Foundation). As of the database, MSSQL Server 2012 Cluster and AlwaysOn properties, working on eight physical servers are hosted. That high availability solution, different subnets with four Sql Server FCI, for Primary and Disaster Recovery centers, is the first sample in worldwide. Web hosting service is Internet Information Service and it can serve on 70 different virtual, 30 physical server. User authentication procees is provided with DC(Domain Controller) and the communication security is ensured with SSL. Communication is provided with the TCP connection established between web and WCF. This type of communication is safe and fast. It is secure because WCF has no access to outside. It has the mechanisms of error detection and logging.


• Source Code Versioning and Control Tool: TFS (Team Foundation Server) 2010,
• Manual Test Tool: MTM (Microsoft Test Manager) 2010
• Automatic Test Tools: VS Test Tool 2010
• Reporting tool: SQL Reporting Server
It has a server contains 16 CPU and 32 GB RAM
• Web hosting Service: IIS (Internet Information Services) 8.0
• Session Management: State Server
• Cache Management: Microsoft AppFabric 1.0
• Authentication process: DC (Domain Controller).

Studies of TFS Application Lifecycle Management(ALM) that defines, tracks and manages the software needs were integrated to project. Practice based MSF Agile method was adopted in order to handle modelling and documentation efficient and productively of the software systems coming with TFS. Agile basically supports many of the processes offered by CMMI method and prepares sub-ground for CMMI 3 transition when needed.

For Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Center:

Firewall (2) – Fortigate, Attack Detection and Prevention System (IDS/IPS) (2), Load Balancing (NLB) ( 2 ) – Citrix-Netscaler , Hardware Security Module (HSM) (2), Backbone Switch (2 ) -HP , Tip 1 Blade Server (12 ), Tip 2 Blade Server (32), Blade Server Frame, System Room Cabinets, Data Storage Unit (1 – HP P6500 200 TB)

Human Resources:

Project has been conducted with contractual and official personnel since 2006. Today, total 23 software developers, 3 database and system experts, 6 domain experts and Microsoft consultants work on the field of risks that might be resulted from the development and implementation phases of modules.


Financial Resources:

Department of Information Technologies of Ministry of Interior is one of the Public Administrations within General Budget and uses the Government Budget as financial resource in the projects developed.

The current technical infrastructure’s support is provided for initiative. Government budget, contractual personnel employment, official personnel, bought equipment, licensed softwares, operating systems, security systems, hardware and provincal network infrastructure, field engineering consultancy are used for this project. The advantages are being able to get services accurately and ensure development and security.

Resources were mobilized when Provincial and Central project modules of Ministry started operating.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Project is sustainable because it is directly connected with e-Transformation Turkey Project in National plan and programme and the project’s development and updates are planned in accordance with the changing laws and requirements of government. It also has the transferable characteristics.

e-Interior system structure can be integrated to systems used by other institutions for needed services and within this context, these are some services provided from other agencies:

Person Taxpayer Information from Revenue Administration, Unemployment Compensation Information from Turkish Employment Institution, Home Care Help Information from Social Services and Children Protection Agency, Help Data Bank from General Directorate of Social Assistance and Solidarity, Agriculture Revenue Information from Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Property Information from General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre, Traffic Registration Information from Turkish National Police, Address Information- Family Listings-Identity Information from Identity Sharing System and One-Step Service Information from Social Security Institution.

Additionally, codes were given to; Ministry of Labour and Social Security (28.05.2010), Ministry of Culture and Tourism ( 31.01.2011 ) ,Undersecretary of Public Order and Security (20.09.2011), General Directorate of PTT (15.11.2011), Ankara Metropolitan Municipality General Directorate of EGO (23.12.2011), Sakarya Metropolitan Municipality General Directorate of Water and Sewerage Administration (30.03.2012) with dated protocols as free for charge. Thus e-Interior continues to fulfill its duty in e-government transformation.

Test application and detailed documentation have been forwarded to Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Ministry of Health being chosen as pilot organizations in the scope of Highway Project. The integration processes of pilot organizations to e-Interior system are still in progress.

Project plays a central role within the framework of inter-agencies automation, web service integrations, document highway studies and e-Correspondence Project. Institutions are involving in e-Government transformation by using the electronical document management system based on e-Interior Project.

Costs of time, communication and personnel are retrenched by providing the public and citizens with that important service through a central system without the necessity of separate investments of each governorate in order to complete the transition to e-government services

Project is transferrable because the external stakeholders described above gain advantage from project. Also, codes have been given to another public institutions already.

• High costs for maintenance of separately operating softwares and security of every single information on the established database are prevented.
• Communication costs of Ministry of Interior which has intense data and work flow between central and provincial units are minimized.
• It is ensured that inspection and audits can now be conducted from the center, there is no need to do on-site.
• Because the same applications (common modules are being used) in all units, the adaptation period that needed for personnel assignment changes is shortened.
• The project is given to other ministries and institutions free of charge and the quicker and cheaper extension of e-government will be ensured with that.
• Important progress is made in providing performance control.
• Integrations with other e-government projects and expansion of Citizen Oriented Services will continue.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
A successful e-government model has numerous benefits to a wide range of aspects for a country from an economic development to socio-cultural enhancement; increasing life quality and a stronger participatory democracy. transparency was ensured with the accurate information flow between the users and the implementers of the project. Awarenes trainings, workshops and guides organised for users have created a correct feedback and accurate development opportunity for developers. For this reason the project was and has still been told to users through negotiaton, not imposition.

Project has reached its goals upon starting to be used country-wide. It is and will be used by other institutions. Besides, the project is on its way to be the center of e-government project. More the institutions use their electronical document system, sooner the all procedures and processes will be carried into electronical environment.
Project has shown us that providing the citizens with fast and qualified service in local work conditions is possible with the preparation of necessary infrastructure; the risks can be diminished by working with consulting specialists on the subjects such as software architecture, development phases and application lifecycle; the required infrastructure needs to be established to ensure the security in e-government data flow with information security, follow up of the project and related reportings.

Deficiencies of e-Interior Project modules and module usage, misuses are evaluated in line with the database registries by making the necessary analysis and surveys. Thereby, deductions about usage numbers of project and their reasons can be made.


The obstacles encountered during the early implementation period were overcome and the project has become an indispensable tool for conducting the work and processes in Ministry of Interior and its connected organizations.

Because the required data flow is provided with web services through the project, other public institutions are facilitated with opportunity to carry out more secure and rapid process .

Impact area and the advantages that it had provided to many agency and users aroused interest both in Turkey and abroad.

e-Interior project was awarded with the prize of e-TR (e-Turkey) in 2012. e-TR is a competition organized by TÜSİAD(Turkish Industry and Business Association) and TIF(Turkish Information Foundation) in order to increase the quality, effectiveness and competitive power in economy and social life; make contribution to accomplish transformation to informaction society which will contribute to creation of transparent and efficient public administration; draw attention to sample practices in government; introduce the innovative initiatives to public opinion; support and stimulate the successful initiatives.


Introduction articles took place in the journal and magazines of Informatics Association of Turkey, Turkish Administrators Association and Administrative Researches Foundation of Turkey in this scope.

Others: January – June 2012-1 issue of “Sosyo Ekonomi Dergisi” of Hacettepe University “e-Devlet Çalışmalarına Bir Örnek: ‘e-İçişleri” (p. 223-248) (English Translation: Socio-Economic Journal, A Sample for e-Government Studies: e-Interior) and in The News Journal of Ministry of Interior, September-October,November-December 2009 Issue: 5-6 “Bakanlığımız Hizmetlerinde E-Dönüşüm: E-İçişleri Projesi”(p. 20–21) (“e-Transformation in Services of our Ministry: The e-Interior Project”, in English).

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Republic of Turkey Ministry of Interior Department of Information Technologies
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Zuhra Yenioglu
Title:   Coordinator  
Telephone/ Fax:   903124224600
Institution's / Project's Website:   https://www.e-icisleri.gov.tr
E-mail:   zuhre.yenioglu@icisleri.gov.tr  
Address:   Inonu Bulvarı No:4 Bakanlıklar
Postal Code:  
City:   Cankaya
State/Province:   Ankara
Country:   Turkey

          Go Back
Print friendly Page