THE INSIDE STORIES OF THE WAY TO DESIGN A CORPORATE WEBSITE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS : THE CASE OF KOCAELİ BOROUGHS

Abstract

Kocaeli is one of the most industrialized cities of Turkey, located in Marmara region next to İstanbul. The city incorporates many big trade organisations, small and medium size enterprises, non-governmental organisations, a university with fifty thousand students, tourism and leisure time facilities etc. Both social and economic activities are in a massive and complex nature, so the local governments of the city both enjoy the high local council revenue and deal with the problem of high local service demands. As part of governmental structure of the country, local governments deal with day-to-day relations and services to the public. Today, it is very vital for local governments to find out the best way of service provision and effective communication with less expense, so website communication and service provision by internet/corporate website seem to be the most popular solution. But, this relatively newer communication/service provision tool for governments need to be designed carefully, strategically, up-to-date and professionally. This aspects of website design can help to have a better communication channel and also a place to provide services for local government. That’s why, exploring the cases can highlight the inside stories and actual dynamics of how and why they were designed and used in local governments. In this paper, the questions mentioned above were asked in case of Kocaeli boroughs, local governments. A qualitative, structured questionnaire was used to gain first hand information from the local governments in Kocaeli and also website monitoring and content examination was used to compare the data. Results are descriptive, expressive form of a qualitative research approach and maintain inside stories on the procedures and the aim of building a website in the framework of this case.

Keywords

• case study, local government, corporate website, communication

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