United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

While technologies are getting more and more sophisticated, there have also been numerous changes in urban environments. Urban dwellers have become accustomed to advanced technologies and services, and accordingly they demand more; Seoulites were no exception.

The city government of Seoul, purveyor of one of the premier e-governments in the world, has provided its citizens with the finest public services online since 2003. However, the tech-savvy citizens of Seoul didn’t seem to be satisfied with e-public services only available from home or office, since they have been accustomed to internet access via their mobile phones for quite some time. What they wanted next was omnipresent public service available from anywhere and at anytime. In particular, the people were craving fast access to information such as traffic conditions and cultural events even while on the move. It is to this end that drove the Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) to launch ⓜSeoul702, a mobile portal built and run by the government to provide access to these highly demanded public services and others.

Specifically speaking, a different means that would facilitate the involvement of the citizenry and reflect their wishes was required. Administrative services delivered by the mobile internet were called for with the emergence of an IT-driven paradigm shift: more and more industries apply digital technology to their work processes; business systems have become computerised fully or partially; mobile communication has become part of everyday life. In other words, it was time to create an environment in which varied ubiquitous services are offered by mobile devices so as to maximise the level of the citizen satisfaction. For instance, if you see that someone dumps a bag of rubbish in an undesignated area, you no longer need to come back home to report the incident via the internet. All that is necessary is to dial 702 on your mobile phone followed by the internet connection key, and then simply upload a photo of the scene with the rubbish bag or leave a short text about the nuisance by following the menus.

In a nutshell, ⓜSeoul702 has eliminated any inconvenience the public may come across from being away from the computer by allowing them access to the same e-service as the one people enjoy at home.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The ‘ⓜ’ in ⓜSeoul702 stands for “Mobile portal”; the 702 represents the numbers dialed to connect users to the portal, similar to 112 for emergency services in many countries. By dialing 702 followed by the internet connection key on your mobile, you can access a total of 38 public services. These services come under six service areas: Participation in civic affairs, Traffic information, Cultural and Weather information, e-Tax, Public facility booking and City government news. Considering that almost each and every adult in Seoul has a mobile phone, the city government wanted to come up with a new way to communicate with the people more effectively, in line with its vision – “Ubiquitous Seoul, the World’s Best e-Government.” Therefore, the Information System Planning Bureau (ISPB) of the SMG, the department responsible for the initiative of the mobile portal, gave a birth to ⓜSeoul702 to respond to the new lifestyle of the citizenry in a proactive manner. Basically, what the ISPB has focused on is to stimulate two-way communication link between the government and the public. In order to provide interactive communication, the government created different service menus through which the people can suggest ideas, make complaints, get experts’ opinions and cast a vote for policies; all letting civil servants listen to what the people think. Put it another way, ⓜSeoul702 played a significant role in realising participatory democracy in the municipal government by means of mobile phones. Another benefit that the mobile portal brought to the city is that it laid the groundwork to actualise Ubiquitous Seoul, the vision of the e-Seoul government. Through its omnipresent e-public information, citizens can gain all kinds of useful information, ranging from traffic, culture, and weather to public tenders and tax payment, all on a real-time basis via mobile phones. Most importantly, ⓜSeoul702 is a client-centric service that reflects individual citizens’ interests and lifestyles: wide-ranged customised news about the city, events, cultural events, education programmes and job vacancies are at your fingertips with ⓜSeoul702. Ultimately, the whole initiative has changed the government culture from a supplier’s perspective, i.e. government, to the client’s, i.e. citizenry.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
In May 2006, the Information System Planning Bureau, the department in charge of the city’s informatisation, devised u-Seoul Master Plan to come truly a ubiquitous technology-led city. Under the vision of the e-Seoul government, the master plan drew a picture of future Seoul with six specific objectives, namely U-Care (city with the finest social security system), U-Fun (city with full of cultural aspects), u-Green (eco-friendly city), U-Transport (city with the most convenient transport system), u-Business (good city in which to do business) and u-Governance (city with an intelligent and responsive governing system). Names of each objective implicate a respective vision of the future of Seoul empowered by ubiquitous technology. An idea to launch the mobile portal came along as a part of the u-Seoul master plan; the idea was considered feasible enough, given the high rate of mobile phone penetration among Seoul citizens. Another reason for launching ⓜSeoul702 is because the city was convinced that the service would make a difference in providing public services and become a new means to deliver information for the next generation. Above all, the fact that the mobile portal service would help improve efficiency a great deal, when people file civil petitions, was the prime reason to officially launch the initiative in September 2006.

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
In order to set a direction to run ⓜSeoul702, the Information System Planning Bureau applied Business Process Management (BPM), a customer-centred business approach that many advanced companies have adopted as a tool in bringing innovation. By adopting BPM, the SMG was able to give shape to the initiative in terms of work process standardisation and systemisation and to take another step forward in realising mobile administration, which would offer comprehensive administrative information more promptly, more responsively and more interactively. The ISPB formed a task force among the Bureau employees as an initial step to move forward with the strategic plan of the mobile portal, while signing varied contracts with private companies concerned. Simultaneously, the city government carried out a number of feasibility studies on different areas, including civil petition, transport, culture, environment, taxation and PR, through a number of interviews, polls and focus groups. As a result of the studies, some particular needs areas came up and were designated as core public service fields for ⓜSeoul702 to cover. Therefore, new prototypes of those services that would work best in the mobile internet environment were developed in turn so as to apply the existing web-based services to the new environment. In accordance with the prototypes built, the ISPB specially designed four service areas of the mobile portal: Information on daily life; Tailor-made services; Communication channels; and Civic affairs. On the basis of the four areas, the government drew up a three phased business plan according to task priority and co-relations between the tasks.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The Information System Planning Bureau has been building ⓜSeoul702 in accordance with the city government’s programme development methodology step by step in three phases. Projects in the first phase had been carried out for twelve months from January to December 2007. In this phase, the Bureau first of all built the backbone set up the basic system of ⓜSeoul702 as well as main service menus such as Suggestions by Citizens, Complaint Report, Q & A on Public Services, Traffic Info, Environment Info, and Vote on Policies. The service was fully opened to the public after a trial period as well as a certain period of time to run a thorough debugging. The second phase was begun in January 2008 right after the launch of the mobile portal service. The ISPB continuously focused on improving functions of each m-public service, while working on enhancing legibility, accessibility, convenience and economic feasibility as well as trying to make the mobile portal be available on more diverse devices. To this end, the city government has spared no effort to create contents that reflect the citizens’ needs and apply them to the service. Most of all, WINC* service is a good example to show the SMG’s endeavour to boost the citizen involvement. In the beginning of 2010, the Bureau will kick off the third stage with the aim of providing more sophisticated yet convenient services for the general public. * WINC: Wireless Internet Numbers for Contents provide direct access to particular contents offered the wireless internet portal, just as extension numbers in office telephone systems provide access to specific personnel. In the context of ⓜSeoul702, particular submenus of the mobile portal are assigned WINC numbers. When users want to access particular menus on the mobile portal, without needing to navigate a path beginning from the portal homepage, they can dial 702 followed by the hash/pound key (#) plus the WINC number when initiating a connection to the portal. By doing so, users can save both bandwidth and time online by directly connecting to pages they want to visit.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Considering the fact that the services are enabled by mobile technology, with its still relatively expensive bandwidth and hardware size limitations, ⓜSeoul702 was required to deal with issues such as managing the volume of information, size of mobile phone screen and number of letters allowed to be input. Also, how to process information from each division into a form that would be suitable for the mobile portal through integration between existing systems and that of ⓜSeoul702 was another matter to take care of. Primarily, the potential price burden to users was a crucial issue. Technically, there is no fee charged by the government for gaining information on the mobile portal. However, when it comes to affordable information service, fees charged per unit of data transferred remain the norm and the lack of flat-rate data-service plans offered by telecoms had been one of major obstacles preventing users from more frequent visits to ⓜSeoul702, resulting in a rather smaller number of those logging in. However, the SMG solved this problem by implementing the WINC service to the most frequently visited submenus of the mobile portal, enabling users to directly visit those menus. In doing so, access time that users are online via mobile phone has substantially decreased, which in turn led to reduce the price burden that is charged depending on the access time. Naturally, the page view frequency of ⓜSeoul702 has dramatically increased from 69,000 in January 2008 to 1,500,000 as of December 2008, showing roughly 22 times the previous year’s traffic. To address the problem of the volume or size, the ISPB has continuously tried to offer the services through more diversified devices to help reduce users’ difficulties in browsing the services in limited screen space on mobile phone. And now, those who own even smart phones or PDAs can enjoy the services of ⓜSeoul702. Menu icons and colours have been changed to better ones so that users can access the service more easily. Meanwhile, the Bureau has also worked on improving functions of the mobile portal by listening to the citizens’ opinions: The people wanted to have faster and more affordable information especially on traffic, culture and weather on a real-time basis, and the government arranged this information be accessible through the WINC service. As for the issue of a difference in systems, mobile WAP and Contents Management System (CMS) were used to handle the issue of information processing for the mobile portal in conjunction with the internet web.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
Under the leadership of the CIO of the SMG, the Information System Planning Bureau (ISPB) spearheaded the initiative of ⓜSeoul702 by running the whole project from A to Z, building the backbone and dealing with users’ feedback. On the other hand, as the mobile portal needs to offer a variety of information from diverse sources, collaborative work with relevant divisions within the SMG was prerequisite. Thus, the ISPB has worked together with many other divisions, including the ones responsible for cultural and tourist information, civil petition/complaints, taxation, e-polling, public facility reservation and traffic information, to ensure the seamless operation of the initiative. By doing so, the ISPB drew up working-level teams with the information-providing divisions alongside a task force team to handle necessary system establishment. The city government also made contracts with several private companies with a great deal of experience in building mobile portals and has been working with them in partnership.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
What the Seoul Metropolitan Government ultimately pursues with the services of ⓜSeoul702 is to provide its people with the most convenient public services by enabling them to gain an access to the services even when they are on the move. With the real-time based civil services, the city government has been able to deliver omnipresent service; the citizens can get benefits from their government much more easily without visiting different government agencies. Now that the infrastructure of mobile administration has been established, the government currently tries to make each and every online public service be available on the mobile portal as well so that the Seoulites can enjoy the e-Seoul government services equally by mobile phone. In this sense, ⓜSeoul702 should be sustainable enough in the form of extending its service scope more and more extensively, adding up more wide-ranging services onto the mobile portal in conjunction with quality upgrades. As for the transferability of the SMG mobile portal, ⓜSeoul702 can be transferred to any organisations at home and abroad upon certain conditions being fulfilled, i.e. an environment where mobile communication network is built alongside a certain level of mobile phone penetration rate. The city of Seoul, one of pioneers in the field of mobile portal, is willing to hand down its know-how and knowledge, learnt throughout the courses of designing, building and running ⓜSeoul702, to other cities in the world.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Simply stated, the mobile portal ⓜSeoul702 has removed time and space restraints between the government and Seoulites, making possible steady two-way communication. Just a few years ago, the people had to gain all the services only in a restricted environment such as home and offices before the mobile portal service wasn’t commenced. Thanks to the wired and wireless infrastructure of e-Seoul government, the public has begun to enjoy what it is like to live in a ubiquitous city. Consequently, the level of the citizen participation has increased quickly as they have become more alert as to what is going on in their neighbourhood, and this growing level in turn has worked on the government to be more responsive to the people. Through the course of building to running the mobile portal, the city government was able to learn lessons that information provided by mobile devices is indeed a futuristic means to boost the citizen involvement in civic affairs and the mobile portal can be a great marketing tool as well. In terms of technology, the Information System Planning Bureau has recognised the importance of convergence by means of IT because the level of citizen participation in the service greatly relies on how efficiently the government put scattered information into one place.


Institution Name:		Seoul Metropolitan Government
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Jeeyoung Kim
Title:		Public official
Telephone/ Fax:		+82 2 63613116
Institution's / Project's Website:		+82 2 37079189
E-mail:		jeeyoung@seoul.go.kr
Address:		Information System Planning Bureau, Seoul City Hall, Deoksugung-Gil 15, Jung-Gu
Postal Code:		100-739
City:		Seoul
State/Province:
Country:

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information