NCA providing essential tech support for E-govt. The National Computerization Agency (NCA) is fast becoming known as the institution with exclusive responsibility for e-government technology support. In reality, the e-government project is one of the key priority projects for NCA and this is underscored by the fact that about two-thirds of the Agency's entire budget is associated with e-government. Currently, NCA receives roughly 320 billion won (approx. US$313 million) from the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs (MOGAHA) out of its total budget of 520 billion won (approx. US$508 million). Now that 220 billion won (approx. US$215 million) is utilized for the e-government project and 100 billion won (approx. US$97 million) is utilized for the administration DB (Data Base) budget, about twothirds of NCA's budget is related to e-government. In this regard, NCA president Kim Changkon, emphasized that the Agency is placing the greatest emphasis on e-government technology support, explaining that a specialized institution's technology support is necessary in order for e-government to operate efficiently. The president, who took office about three months ago, says that since his inauguration, he began to add expand the number of employees considerably in the e-government support team and increased the specialized talent in the team as well, because he found that the e-government project management was not performing as well as he had expected initially. Kim stressed that NCA would devote all its energy toward ensuring that the Roh administration's e-government project would be a success, by strengthening special technology support and business development, particularly now that twothirds of the budget is being directed at egovernment and President Roh Moo-hyun is also showing great interest in its progress. Tangible effects among 31 egovernment roadmap tasks It is interesting to note that as the e-government project was launched in the latter term of the Kim Dae-jung administration, the necessary early groundwork for the egovernment project was completed. The newly-inaugurated NCA president explains that projects similar to the e-government project were already initiated up to 17 years ago and realizing the need to upgrade new e-government projects, the current Roh administration mapped out 31 e-government roadmap tasks on the basis of the Kim Dae-jung administration's egovernment foundation. The e-government project is a core national administration task that the government is promoting strategically for the sake of administration innovation and government reform and it is also a national key informatization project for which approx. 1.04 trillion won (about US$1 billion) will be required from 2004 through 2007. Since full-scale infrastructure construction is under way for the greater part of the e-government roadmap's 31 tasks, the public service personnel and the nation will be able to see some substantial tangible effects appearing from the end of this year, according to Kim. Accordingly, a certificate of residence, 120 million copies of which are issued annually, are being issued with Internet from July this year without service charge. In order for e-voting to be introduced for the National Assembly election in 2008, the government is planning to apply e-votes to private elections such as local elections by way of showing an example from 2006. Moreover, according to the results of egovernment level diagnosis reported to President Roh at the beginning of March this year, over 90% of transactions in key unit affairs of 43 central administration institutions, except for some institutions, appeared to be being handled electronically, Kim added. Concerning the development level of Korea's e-government, the NCA president is proud of the fact that Korea was ranked in the 5th position in the world in terms of the e-government index announced by the UN and some key international organizations such as the OECD, which selected examples of our e-government promotion efforts as exemplary cases. Kim commented that foreigners marvel at Korea's IT informatization achievements, adding that consulting as well as joint cooperation requests about Korea's e-government promotion experience and performance by the NCA are on the increase, with priority given to international organizations as well as developing countries as the awareness of our e-government's excellence is diffused in an international society like which Korea is becoming. Greater part of e-government roadmap 31 tasks' full-scale system construction stage under way In conjunction with international cooperation by e-government, NCA is offering consultancy services for the effective promotion of national informatization, the execution of bilateral joint research tasks, and informatization-associated technology as well as human resource exchanges by establishing an international IT cooperation center already in two countries, namely Mexico and Chile. Notably, the Central & South America ICT Conference celebrating its second anniversary this year with the supervision of these international IT cooperation centers, is being recognized as a gathering for exchanges of qualified personnel from Central & South America region, the Korean government, as well as related companies and interested parties of international organizations such as the World Bank, the UN and the IDB, to discuss key issues and share information. President Kim underlines that joint cooperation with such a large-scale international organization like the World Bank is significant, in that Korea's informatization level and influence are being recognized globally. NCA is striving for the narrowing of the information gap with developing countries in collaboration with the World Bank and this cooperation is to offer informatizationassociated policy as well as technology consulting including e-government for developing countries whose informatization falls behind compared with the view of common global prosperity through informatization. During his service as president of NCA, Kim has committed himself to doing his utmost to transform NCA into a think-tank of u-IT strategy development in preparation for the upcoming Ubiquitous age, pointing out that the society of the future will be transformed into a Ubiquitous society. In developing Ubiquitous-associated policy alternatives such as u-infra and uindustry nurturing, the president pledges that he will strive during his three year tenure to allow Korea to take the lead in this Ubiquitous society and will also carry out NCA's role as an organization dedicating to upgrading Korea's role in disseminating Ubiquitous technology globally.