Digital Citizenship Profiles in Türkiye: A Clustering Analysis Of E-Government Service Usage

Abstract

A cluster analysis has been employed to study usage patterns of e-government services in Türkiye and to develop profiles of digital citizenship. The analysis used microdata from the Turkish Statistical Institute’s 2024 Household Information Technology Usage Survey, which is a representative survey of 18,366 respondents, and contained socio-demographic data such as age, gender, education level, work status, and region (IBBS-1) as well as several behavioral variables such as accessing personal information, making appointments, transferring forms, and applying for social services. The k-means clustering algorithm was applied, and the elbow and silhouette methods suggested that a three-cluster solution best described the data. The results demonstrate that there is not a homogenous digital citizenry in Türkiye. Western provinces represent the first cluster and participants here are using a large number of e-government services with high levels of digital competence. The second cluster consists of participants from eastern provinces who have low levels of digital competence and are not utilizing e-government services. The third cluster (in the central region) represents participants who are transitioning to full digital citizenship. Therefore, future policies related to digital citizenship need to be created with a tiered and targeted approach rather than one-size-fits-all.