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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
An Examination of ICT Spending and the Development of E-Skills in the Republic of Turkey
Author(s)
Shahram Amiri, Joseph Woodside
Full-Text PDF
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DOI:10.17265/1537-1514/2015.11.001
Affiliation(s)
Shahram Amiri, chair of decision and information sciences, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, USA.
Joseph Woodside, assistant professor in decision and information sciences, Stetson University, DeLand, FL, USA.
ABSTRACT
Turkey’s information and communication technology (ICT) sector has made remarkable progress in the recent past according to various statistics. They have jumped 26 places on the network readiness index (NRI), from 71st place in 2010 to 45th place in 2013. Their gross domestic product (GDP) has doubled over the past decade. Their progress is the direct result of a variety of initiatives and public projects in concert with both foreign and domestic investment. Turkey has invested billions of dollars into their ICT sector in order to improve hardware, software, telecommunication, and IT infrastructure. This is all helping create a large demand for e-technology and e-skill in Turkey. This paper seeks to examine the effects of major spending initiatives (foreign vs. domestic investment) on GDP as well as the motives behind investment choices. There will be special emphasis regarding FATIH project—Turkey’s highest dollar ICT project. The paper will include a comparison of GDP to a variety of data sets from the last five years, such as foreign direct investment, investment of public Turkish Lira, investment in hardware, etc. Furthermore, evidence found suggests that the largest public ICT project in Turkey—FATIH—which was a large scale investment in technology in schools—was likely more-economically motivated than educationally-motivated.
KEYWORDS
information and communication technology (ICT), gross domestic product (GDP), network readiness index (NRI), the ICT development index (IDI), Turkey, socioeconomic development
Cite this paper
References
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