The internet has revolutionized almost every industry and human activity from consuming music and books to user-generated content and community behavior. Most industries have rapidly embraced digitalization for a competitive advantage. Governments overall have been rather slow at pursuing "e-Government" initiatives.
South Korea took an early interest in a Nationwide Digital Blueprint and its benefits for government and citizen. In various surveys the e-Government initiatives comes out on top worldwide. The architect for many of these successes is the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC), a powerful and insightful entity which deserves a chapter on its own for its globally respected vision and pioneering initiatives.
Digital society and focus on citizens
South Korea's government services focus on the e-Gov portal. This impressive collection combines over 500 separate services, all integrated and executable online. Departments from healthcare to education, from taxes to law enforcement offer digital services. Most sites offer cell phone or PDA access and allow visitors to sign up for e-mail updates, interact and participate in surveys and join forums. Refreshingly in South Korea each bureaucrat can be reached directly in their given area of responsibility.
The government has methodically worked on tight schedules and ambitious plans. After successfully completing eleven major projects initiated in 2001 to form the basic foundation for the electronic government, in 2003 selected 31 follow-up projects and established an 'e-Government roadmap' to guide the nation and coordinate further activities.
Educated employees
A digitally empowered population needs to be well educated, and digitally connected. It is admirable how many South Korean's engage in self improvement. Typical leisure time activities include learning language skills such as English through online training and on courses delivered via the cell phone. The third most popular digital content on cell phones, after music and gaming, is educational services.
While it is important to educate the citizens and to provide IT technology to schools, that is not enough, teachers also need to be trained. The Korea Information Strategy Development Institute (KISDI) mentions in the IT Industry Outlook Korea 2005 report: By the end of 2000, all of the nation's 10,064 schools had finished LAN installation and Internet connections. Next steps will be to improve teacher's IT literacy, to develop new curriculum and teaching methods using IT, and to produce new educational content using IT. Every teacher is required to participate in the duty training program on IT at least once every four years.
Online taxes
A good indicator of advanced South Korean digital society is taxation. More than four out of five tax returns are processed online. The Home Tax Service system (HTS) started using electronic tax filing services in 2002. Electronic filing for VAT taxes currently amounts to 73.6% as of January 2006, while corporate taxes and income taxes account for 96.9% and 81.2%. Even more amazing is that all the tax related activities can be accomplished via the internet and the cell phone. Not limited just to taxes, by 2004 the government was issuing 393 types of civil petition and processed 4,000 types of civil guides.
The public logistics sectors are all online, handling US$65 billion worth of services per year. The transparency of this information helps in securing competitive bids for government contracts and improves citizen participation and trust.
Projects were designed to rapidly adapt advanced legal frameworks for the digital society. The Electronic Signature and e- Commerce Laws have been passed, clarifying the legal positions in dealing with the digital society including data protection. As a result, by July 2006, 35.7% of all banking transactions were already conducted online.
Coming back to the people
The citizens must be activated and incentivized by government to participate. Information age training was provided to 21 million people (43% of the total population) from civil servants, teachers, the disabled and elderly to fishermen, farmers and housewives. Only by enabling the full society to gain from the digital benefits can the nation truly become a full Digital Korea.
Digital etiquette
With new opportunities, the threats of chaos and confusion may also occur and understanding the role to be played in ensuring the transition does not cause strains to society is clear in South Korea. For example, in February 2006, the government released a 256-page "IT Ethics" textbook for junior and high school students.
Teachers are expected to spend 30 hours instructing from the textbook, whose chapters include "Healthy Mobile Phone Culture," and "Protecting Personal Privacy."
The healthcare industry is naturally fully embracing e-government initiatives. Typical initiatives such as Patient data, medication, and medical history data in digital form are available to treating doctors. In May 2004 for example, Healthpia, a specialist medical technology company, introduced the Diabetes Phone, which incorporated testing for blood sugar levels, over-the-air updates of the results for monitoring and alert services. The phone also includes fat analysis, alcohol levels and stress measurement.
Collaboration is key
The rapid pace of digitalization has been achieved with an unprecedented level of collaboration. Government has laid the foundation, supported the initiatives and when necessary, also funded the early stages of the process. Absolutely vital has been the close cooperation of industry and economy. Successful community service provider collaboration is a key ingredient in remaining advanced in this field.
A fascinating example was the SMS campaign by then candidate, now President Roh of South Korea in the elections of 2002. His campaign sent out 800,000 SMS text messages to spread his political message to the electorate. Its reach was considered the broadest political use of text messaging in electoral politics at the time.
Since then SMS text messaging has become a staple in political activity. The advent of digital Korea has brought about improvements in law enforcement as well as new threats from digital criminals. Hacking into computers, malware and computer viruses, and the distribution of unsound information need managing. The Korean Internet Security Center was established to effectively protect networks from cyber attacks. The digital integrity is also constantly upgraded through developing next-generation encryption systems and campaigns to combat threats to an increasing list of digitally converged devices in homes, cars, cell phones etc.
While individual attacks to persons, business and government by criminals are one part of cyber safety, a larger terrorist initiated threat also emerges. Increasing dependency on secure digital interactions, centralized databases and vast volumes of electronic transactions place the most advanced digital societies like South Korea particularly at risk. Thus the government initiated a Preparation of Countermeasures against Cyber Terror Background and Overview to ensure stability. A security initiative has been in place, since 1996 and in 2002 the Integrated Security Control Center was built with 24 hour monitoring to share attack information among security personnel in real time.
Where did the money come from
The rapid digitalization has been a fully committed and well planned investment, implemented nationwide and now known as the world's most advanced digital infrastructure. How was this achieved Where did the money come from
Much of the Digital society success can be attributed to systematic investments and initiatives in information technologies and telecommunications. A good example is the money collected from mobile telecoms spectrum allocations. In some countries licenses were given out for almost free. In other countries the license fees were treated as a windfall benefit reducing the national deficit. In South Korea all revenues from telecoms spectrum licenses were strategically reinvested into the information technology and telecoms development .Many digital initiatives have been founded on a "launch initiative" principle with only those that attract further private sector investment being seeded via policy or funding, thus helping to jump-start areas of the industry.
The Future cities
The U-City project is led by KT, Korea Telecom. Five U-Cities (Ubiquitous Cities) are being built; the futuristic characteristics include pervasive computing and ubiquitous communications. Yun Hae-jong, the Vice President of KT in charge of the U-City project said: "Revolutionizing traffic, healthcare, education and other lifestyles, the U-City project will create huge benefits for both people and related industries in Korea." Early deliverables range from intelligent parking places that guide drivers to the nearest available parking slots; bridges that monitor themselves via
