Project Search Institution: East Marmara Development Agency (marka in short) Programme

Project Proposal Summary for ICT-PSP

East Marmara Development Agency (MARKA in short)

Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP)

4. ICT for innovative government and public services

4.1: Towards a cloud of public services

The structure of legal entity:
The MARKA is a typical RDA and a government agency, one of 26 spreaded all across Turkey, responsible for East Marmara Region (comprising five provinces, which are Kocaeli, Sakarya, Düzce, Bolu and Yalova) on the northwest of Turkey. MARKA, in order to provide a ubiquitous service, maintains Investment Support Offices in all 5 provinces that makes up East Marmara. MARKA carries out mainly four core functions, i.e. leveraging local governance by promoting interactivity among local stakeholders, conducting regional planning in concert with provincial and national plans, funding promising projects in line with regional priorities outlined in regional plans as well as investment promotion (mainly inward). To meet these objectives MARKA works in close collaboration with its local partners and Investment Support & Promotion Agency of Turkey (ISPAT). It seeks to attract investment through initiating, supporting and developing a wide variety of sizeable, ambitious, quality projects in East Marmara. Projects will enjoy the risk mitigation that arises from having Government backing and a well-defined Government role. MARKA also seeks to assist top local companies in creating higher value-added functions for their business by supporting them in building expertise, innovating, growing, creating new partnership and reaching international customers. Small and medium enterprises also are provided an array of services to encourage business establishment and development in East Marmara.
MARKA, for the sake of swiftness and smoothness of its investment promotion operations:

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  Utilizes standardised forms to collect information from investors and regional partners;
  
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  Collects proof of concept information that might be useful for early stage investments;
  
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  Maintains and updates a regional inventory of available lands for each type of investments;
  
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  Compiles up-to-date information on state aids, incentives and low interest loans;
  
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  Carries out investment feasibility studies, including cost analysis, legal conditions, operational and environmental permits, logistics and various site conditions and updates its knowledge base for future operations.
  

MARKA tries to use information and communication technologies efficiently as a public server, his information and communication infrastructure is highly fragmented. Considering the scope of the investment promotion tasks, an integrated system that operates under the cloud will render a wide range of components of investment promotion (i.e. introduction to what the Region offers; available lands with appertaining specifications; applicable incentives and state aids; relevant legislation and regulations, other requirements etc.) easy to understand and easy to browse. Such a smart cyber-infrastructure is intended to integrate and streamline all the basic functions of investment promotion that are already carried out by MARKA, and cut the service time to potential investors. The cloud will simplify the data maintenance, increase search capability and options, have a user-friendly interface allowing the user to easily browse the interactive content on his/her own (for both the investors and MARKA staff), and even hands-off multi-platform operation capacity to update its database.

MARKA, as a government agency, seeks to join o consortium preparing a project proposal under sub-theme “4.1 Towards a cloud of public services” and interested in testing and improving a pilot investment promotion cloud developed by a Software Company specialized in this area and taking part in such consortium.

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  Development Agencies
  
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  Investment Promotion Agencies
  
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  Software Firms (specialized on cloud computing)
  
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  Data Management Firms
  
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  National Statistical Institutes