SEOUL, KOREA – The Information Professional Association of Korea (IPAK) held a breakfast seminar on March 14th at the JW Marriot Hotel in Seoul. The seminar featured Seo Pil-Eon, the Vice minister of the Ministry of Public administration and security(MOPAS) as a guest speaker along with 65 members of the association. The vice minister presented the factors that contributed to Korea winning at the UN rating and Korea’s strategy to promote informatization under the theme of ‘Major Issues Surrounding National Informatization’. 

Seo said “The e-government of Korea is number one in the world, and the world admires our e-government system.” He also explained that the UN’s rating for e-government focuses on two factors: e-government development and participation. The e-government development industry is determined by the quality of the service provided by government websites and its infrastructure. The online participation index is decided by how accessible the policy participation is for citizens.  

The vice minister assessed “Last year, Korea’s exports of e-government solutions surpassed USD 200 million.” He explained, “Korean e-government continues to grow at a remarkable rate. Our major export partners are developed nations that meet international standards, and the quality of their online service significantly improved after implementing our solution.” He also commented that the reasons why Korea was ranked number one by the UN for two consecutive years are the excellent infrastructure, the superior informatization and the strong leadership of the Korean government. He added that Korea recognized informatization as the core method of advancing the nation, and conducted regular check-ups and monitoring at a presidential level. He also explained that the government is planning to enhance support for exportation in coalition with KOICA. He emphasized that systems that have high-potential will meet international settings such as procurement; tariffs and patents will be commercialized as 10 export items. 

With its continuous endeavor in e-government, he outlined the plan to realize Smart Administration by 2015. With this plan, the government will develop internal mobile services such as work-portal and knowledge management systems, as well as provide mobile services for the public to file complaints or to obtain information. The vice minister also said that the government is looking for measures to promote the use of Smart Work and is also looking to build a Smart Work Center so that state workers of central administrative agencies that are moving to Sejong City from Seoul can work anywhere at any time. 

The vice minister also stated that the government will share public information in order to boost new businesses, create jobs, and realize a One-Stop administration by sharing information among administrative agencies. As he explained the measure for information sharing, he also underlined the importance of the security and protection of personal information for a safer information-oriented society. He stressed that must elevate the level of personal information security and protection as well as enhance the capacity for response against cyber attacks. He explained, “We have to facilitate the development of our information culture, and we will provide informatizational education in order to reinforce the information utilization ability of vulnerable people including the handicapped and the elderly.”