Information System Level in Turkish Ports and the Direction of Improvement

Due to the changing business environment in the global scale, the competition between container ports has become very severe in the last few decades. The ports started to invest in their infrastructure and information systems in order to increase their efficiency and to sustain their position as a hub of their region. On the other hand, Turkish ports fell behind in this competition of efficiency, and this situation is affecting the ports as well as the overall economy severely. This paper aims to offer the direction of information systems in Turkish ports. For this purpose, the current information systems in Turkey’s public and private ports were examined by multiple case study methods, general problems were appointed and the direction of improvement was offered. According to the results, the low level of information technology utilization is not due to any technical incapability, but rather due to administrational deficiency, such as out-of-date business processes, severe bureaucracy and insufficient human resources.