Utilizing IT technology to enhance administrative efficiency is a major tool the government employs to raise competitiveness in the 21st century. Korea’s advanced e-government system topped the UN Global E-Government Survey, prompting global interest in Korea’s tech-savvy techniques. The Korean-style e-government system will provide a new challenge for domestic IT companies while also helping spread the word about Korean administrative culture to overseas companies.
E-government system exports are constantly growing since the inter-government exchange increased in 2006. The market stood at a mere 9.87 million dollars in 2007, but during the past three years, the numbers have doubled annually, reaching 150 million dollars, or a 223 percent increase from the year before.
From 2002-10, Korea has exported 15 systems worth 297.2 million dollars to a total of 23 countries. A variety of fields, including tariff, procurement, patent, etc. that can be internationally generalized and standardized are actively exported. Ecuador’s electric customs clearance system, Indonesia’s electric patent application system, Bangladash’s national telecommunications system, Mali’s government management network, and Sri Lanka’s tariff system are good examples.
Such an increase in overseas exports of e-government can be attributed to an interest in Korea’s e-government ever since it was ranked No. 1 on the UN Global E-government Survey. It is also due to support of exports through inter-government cooperation and improvements on IT companies’ overseas marketing environment. At the same time, it is a reflection of Korea’s development of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) that provides a basis for the e-government. At the moment, Korea is working with 43 countries, helping them establish e-governments and providing them with support in the combined format of overseas exports and information on public development funding programs.
Expansion of export routes
The Korea Customs Service’s Universal Pass, known as ‘UNI-PASS,’ is often mentioned as a successful case. The Korea Customs Service has been continuously promoting the computerization of customs affairs since 1992. It established a 100-percent electric customs clearance system in 1998 for the first time in the world. It was then developed into online customs clearance system in 2005 so that it can be used anywhere, anytime conveniently and cheaply.
Of the 63 information systems, ‘UNI-PASS’ has employed and integrated seven systems related to trade customs, that is an export customs system, import customs system, tax collection system, trade freight management system, refund system and unified customs channel system. Furthermore, it is an intelligent network that connects to 110,000 customers, including trade and shipping companies, custom services, bonded warehouse and other government institutes, delivering customized information for each company’s needs.
With the system, it takes less than 2 minutes to clear export customs, 2.5 hours for import customs, 5.2 hours for tariff refunds and 10 minutes to pay taxes, which makes it one of the most successfully managed customs service information system among the World Customs Organization’s 176 member countries. UNIPASS was presented with the ‘eAsia Award' from the Asia Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (AFACT) in 2007, and has earned the international standard of ISO 20000 in the management sector in 2006. Its excellence was further noted when it was ranked as the world’s top system in Trading Across the Border category of the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business 2010’ assessments. Thus, the interests and needs of developing countries increased, adding energy to the export of the system.
Starting from October 2005 when a contract was signed on digitalization of Kazakhstan’s BPR/ISP sector of custom management, exporter countries are now expanding to Central and South America, Central Asia and Africa. In July 2010, the e-Customs system was established in Mongolia’s customs services. Taking Korea’s electric customs system as its model, Mongolia has finished setting up five systems on freight management, trade customs, data warehouse (DW), risk management (RM) and Internet customs portal system. So far Korea’s Customs Service has opened up new markets in Central and South America by helping Dominica and Guatemala establish new systems, and has actively promoted system exports by providing consults to Central Asian countries such as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
In December, a US$24 million contract was signed with Ecuador’s customs service institute to export UNI-PASS. Ecuador’s e-customs system will be set up over two years, and will include major systems needed for customs service including trade customs, tax collection, trade freight management, tax evaluation, tax refund, risk management and integrated management of tariff information. The system will be modified and redesigned according to the local environment, following analysis results on Ecuador’s customs management process.
While past UNI-PASS exports to the Dominican Republic and Guatemala were supported by domestic grants and credit assistance, construction of Ecuador’s $24 million e-customs system was executed purely through its own funding, making it an actual acquisition of foreign money. Nara Marketplace of Korea’s Public Procurement Service is another internationally recognized e-procurement system. Nara Marketplace is a unified channel of Korea’s public procurement that handles the entire procurement process of registration, bidding, contract and payment online. It is used by more than 40,000 public institutions and 190,000 enterprises.
The system reveals all information on procurement service real time, securing transparency and cutting costs on procurement transactions. Nara Marketplace, a public procurement service, was first set up in 2002 and through consistent upgrade it has been recognized worldwide by such organizations as the UN and OECD. Most recently, high-ranking officials from overseas are increasingly visiting PRS. This is due to a recent need in these countries to enhance procurement transparency in regard to funding through international organizations, adding value to Korea’s world famous e-procurement system, Nara Marketplace. Based on such assessments, Nara Marketplace was exported to various
countries starting with a demonstration case in Vietnam in November 2008, then to Costa Rica in 2009 and Mongolia in 2010.
In Vietnam, the demonstration system, including user registration, announcement, bidding and commencement, was set up in three institutions: the of City of Hanoi, Electric Power Corporation and Telecom Corporation. It began to fully operate services last July. Mer-Link was launched in August 2010 in Costa Rica, where the Costa Rican government signed a contract in 2009 agreeing on e-procurement establishment. The Korean government has so far provided consultations on the four areas of task redesigning, training, list information and inspection. Korea also signed an agreement with the Mongolian government in 2007.
Support for education related IT programs of developing countries
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education,Science and Technology (MEST) is supporting developing countries wishing to digitalize their education system. The support program is a part of the ‘Development and International Cooperation on e-Learning Industry’ strategy started in 2002 – a project highly praised in the international community.
To globalize this web-based ‘e-Learning Korea’ program, Korea is providing used PCs, e-Learning training, international consulting, international exhibitions and conferences as resources for the developing countries. Staff members from more than 60 nations will visit Korea yearly to benchmark the e-education system.
From 2005-10, MEST provided 18,481 reassembled PCs to a total of 23 countries and e-Learning training for 2,717 teachers and education administrative staff members from 29 countries, including Cambodia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kenya and Guatemala. International consulting support was executed in 12 exchange partner countries to set up e-Learning policies from 2006-10. These PCs were donated from education institutions when they replaced their computers.
They were reassembled using Pentium III level parts so as to ensure they were fit to be used educationally, and Korean software was installed. As both domestic and international IT companies are enforcing cooperation with such projects, many companies actively took part in the support for developing countries and have provided related software free of charge. Windows 98/2000 from Microsoft Korea, Word Processor from Hancom, Computer Aided Design (CAD) software from Intel Korea, Namo Web Studio (a web editor program) from Sejoong Namo Tour, KOSNET program from National Institute of International Education and mental arithmetic soccer game from Korea Education Frontier Association are among the software provided to developing countries.
In its early stages, an e-Learning globalization project has provided reassembled computers, but now new PCs, laptops, ICT packages (projectors, digital cameras, laptops) supply and construction of ICT centers are provided by the education authorities of cities and provinces depending on the country’s conditions. Korea’s e-Learning support program is expected to contribute to close the education information gap among countries by elevating ICT utilization levels of developing countries. In the future, e-Learning is expected to provide customized consulting services to those countries actively requesting consultations.
Seoul’s intelligent traffic system
Seoul is the leading city in the world of e-government. In the UN’s biennial Global E-government Survey on the top world’s 100 cities, Seoul was chosen as No.1 for four consecutive times since 2003. According to the World E-government Assessment Council, Seoul has the most outstanding web-based administrative services among 100 metropolises.
In 2004, when Seoul actively became involved in export of e-Government, Lee Myung-bak, the then mayor of Seoul and current President of South Korea, visited Moscow and signed an MOU agreeing on the e-Moscow project modeled after Seoul’s e-government system. The limelight is on the intelligent traffic system that covers IT-based transportation cards, integrated billing and metering systems and traffic information centers.
Azerbaijan recently opened TOPIS(Transport Operation & InformationService), a center that manages and operates general traffic conditions. Seoul TOPIS is in charge of management and operation of monitoring traffic on major roads of Seoul, city bus services, unmanned camera systems and more. Seoul’s T-money transportation card system was exported to Wellington, New Zealand, in 2008 then to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2010. Currently, more than 400 buses in Wellington are running on the T-money transportation card system, and these cards are also used in about 200 retail shops as methods of payment.
The system is also in the process of being installed onto about 1,000 buses in Kuala Lumpur to be in service later this year. The T-money card is a RF (radio frequency) typed contactless card that can be used at a distance as far as 3 centimeters without any particular power source. More than anything, the transportation cardm system makes it possible to systematically collect and analyze data on the card usage, which can result in scientific establishment of transportation policies. In the case of Seoul, a daily average of 35 million public transportation usage data obtained through the T-money transportation card system is used as basic information to set up scientific traffic policies.
The number of passengers in each bus section, the fastest and slowest speed of different times, travel distance of passengers and number of transfers are all included in this database, and are used as valuable information needed to Seoul city’s public transportation policy that includes route adjustments, frequency of bus dispatches, route management and fee adjustments. Such an outcome of Seoul’s public transportation policy has attracted benchmark visits from more than 30 countries, with 1,000 people including overseas civil servants and traffic specialists aiming at transforming their won traffic systems.
E-government intelligence for the next generation
In order to promote e-Government as next generation export item, the Korean government has been making commercializing efforts by providing intellectual property rights of e-government to export companies, support of e-government framework development, documentation of e-government system and more. An MOU has already been signed with Brunei, Bulgaria and Inter-American Development Bank, and the IT Cooperation Council was held with Vietnam, Bulgaria and Kuwait to promote collaborative projects.
In addition, information resource centers were set up in Bolivia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, the Middle East, Africa and South American nations. Support is provided in conjunction with e-Government export on digitalization ODA projects, including invitations of more than 200 IT specialists from 43 developing countries to participate in special programs.
Director General of IT promotion, Shim Deok-sup says, “Due to topography of overseas markets for e-government, domestic IT companies need to make sales to foreign government which calls for intergovernment cooperation. In the future, cooperation projects will be expanded centering on government collaboration projects, aiming to achieve US$200 billion exports of e-government systems by 2011.” Overseas exports of the system not only earn foreign currencies but also play a big part in job creation and enhancing country image as IT Korea. Much is to be anticipated on Korea’s future as IT power player with effective use of e-government.
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