4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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Widespread adoption of eGovFrame will help create e-Government system that is more robust, consistent, efficient and interoperable. To achieve this, MOSPA focused on the following four points.
Design a technically superior software framework.
To standardize eGovframe, an environment and functionality analysis of five companies’ proprietary frameworks was carried out and 500 key stakeholders were subsequently surveyed and interviewed. As a result, four environments consisting of 13 service groups and 54 service functionalities were identified. First, a well-known and proven OSS for eGovframe was selected based on an analysis of stakeholder views for each service group. Then, all OSS candidates were comprehensively tested and analyzed per international software evaluation process model (ISO 14598) and practical software evaluation process (PECA). Based on the results of the physical and logical testing, 40 OSS were selected for composing eGovframe. Also, in order to identify particular components which were commonly used government-wide, 67 e-Government projects from 2004 to 2007 were analyzed. During the process, 31,114 functionalities were reviewed with criteria which included high ratio of redundant development, reusability among government systems, and standard adoptability. After several rounds of workshops and thorough in-depth discussions, 219 common components with their corresponding categories and priorities were identified. By incorporating the best aspects of a wide variety of sources, the e-Government framework was born.
Build a support system for eGovFrame as public and partnership.
To mitigate stakeholders’ concerns about how eGovFrame can be maintained and continuously enhanced, MOSPA established the eGovFrame Center at NIA. The Center takes the lead in incremental advancement and standardization to build and manage national e-Government systems. The main services that the Center provides are technical support, training, consultation, and interoperability verification. The eGovFrame Center website (http://www.egovframe.go.kr) provides information on the eGovFrame structure, architecture, wiki guides, updated version, resources, FAQ, and etc. In addition, the eGovFrame Open Community was later organized to enhance voluntary participation from diverse outside developers to resolve issues, share technical know-how and ultimately, add new and improved functionality to the framework. In essence, the eGov Open Community contributes to the expansion and enhancement of eGovFrame under the direction of the Center.
Set up long term initiative for developing eGovFrame.
To ensure that eGovframe was well implemented in a methodical and efficient manner, MOSPA and NIA established a three-year plan (2008-2010) to develop eGovFrame. Specifically, the plan called for the release of the run time environment in 2008, development environment in 2009 and operation environment in 2010, which would ultimately cover the complete life cycle of the system development. In addition, MOSPA and NIA developed 142 common components in 2008, 30 in 2009, and 47 in 2010 to eliminate redundant development of functions such as authentication, access, logging and bulletin boards.
Implement and Promote eGovFrame, starting with government pilot projects.
To overcome the concern that usage of OSS may not be stable or adequately supported, MOSPA selected seven candidate pilot projects to verify its stability and identify success cases. In the end, the success of these pilot projects helped overcome any concerns and/or resistance to the adoption of eGovFrame within the public sector. A guide for full system replacement or building on top of legacy systems using the eGovFrame was distributed to promote stability in operating the software framework. For instance, a central system named “Minwon 24” provided a one-stop online service for citizens by integrating more than 700 other public service systems, and as a result, this helped to successfully incorporate eGovframe during its redevelopment project. Eventually, the widespread expansion of these successful cases encouraged the adoption of eGovFrame in public and private sectors.
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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eGovFrame has been developed over the past six years through the participation of an array of stakeholders. Over 500 stakeholders were identified and actively engaged in the project. To manage the process, they were separately categorized into the following groups, each with their own concerns and goals:
Managing Partners – MOSPA and NIA, which established, maintained and oversaw eGovFrame
MOSPA proposed and planned the standardization of software framework. During the planning process, internally, opinions were gathered from various agencies that implemented e-Government services and externally, outside opinions and advice were gathered through public hearings, interviews and surveys. Even after its release, NIA provides governance over the Open Community which continues contributing to the maintenance and improvement of eGovFrame.
Vendors – Small and large software companies that build e-Government solutions, and would be expected to use eGovFrame in their future builds
Small and large vendors expressed concern over the potential negative impact on their competitive standing in the market, even as they potentially stood to gain from the increased efficiency offered by eGovFrame. To address their concerns and goals, they were actively engaged throughout the planning and development stages.
Customers – Government bodies commissioning e-Government projects, previously on separate silos and in the future using eGovFrame
The government and the public stood to benefit from the increased interoperability across e-Government systems and reduced cost of future projects using the framework. Their primary concern was whether the framework would be of adequate quality and continue to receive adequate support for maintenance and improvement.
Experts – Software developers unfamiliar with OSS
To overcome their concerns, NIA directed eGovFrame in the manner of an OSS project, and provided extensive training and regular seminars throughout the project and afterwards. The Open Community was created to foster a culture of Open Source, which in turn instilled trust in OSS.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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To build eGovFrame, MOSPA mobilized four types of resources – financial, technical, OSS and human –from both the public and private sectors.
Financial Investment: Starting in 2007, MOSPA allocated a portion of its regular e-Government project budget towards the building of eGovFrame. The first stage called the Information Strategy Planning (ISP) estimated a total expenditure of USD 17 million over a span of six years. Upon completion, MOSPA continued to invest approximately USD 1 million each year to maintain the framework and support its dissemination in developing countries. By contrast, a comparable proprietary framework in the private sector would cost USD 14 to 17 million to develop and USD 2.8 to 3.8 million per year to maintain. These numbers indicate that there is higher efficiency and return on investment (ROI) for the Korean government.
Technical Expertise: In building eGovFrame, the requirements and existing proprietary frameworks of five companies of varying size were analyzed and compared. Also the varied inputs from over 500 stakeholder gathered through the open process provided a flexible and representative common baseline to reach a consensus. In addition, MOSPA launched the eGovFrame Open Community, which accumulated the knowledge of the developer community into a centralized repository of code, documentation, use cases, seminars and forums.
Open Source Software(OSS): To reduce the dependency on major IT companies, a well-known and proven OSS was selected. Any OSS which was relevant to eGovFrame was listed and existing proprietary frameworks were analyzed under the direction of MOSPA. This resulted in a list of 1,300 OSS. Upon completion of the OSS evaluation process in collaboration with 11 companies of varying sizes, 175 OSS were eventually evaluated against requirements that mainly focused on the constraints for integration and interfaces of eGovFrame in the first logical test. 85 OSS, derived from the first logical test, were evaluated for the basic function and non-functional requirements. As a result, 40 OSS were ultimately selected for composing eGovFrame.
Collaborative Human Leadership and Talent: Adoption of the framework by vendors and clients was entirely voluntary. Therefore, strong and effective leadership by MOSPA was essential to build trust within the community at large. MOSPA responded to this challenge by demonstrating its leadership through training, guidance, knowledge sharing and demonstration of successful cases. At the same time, broad participation by the eGovFrame open community was strongly encouraged, which has led to over 9,000 developers at present, and this further exemplified the successful efforts demonstrated by the centralized leadership at MOSPA. This model of centralized governance and distributed execution has been the basis for many of the most successful open source projects such as Linux. As a result, it was possible to voluntarily monitor and check the implementation and operational progress of information systems, enabling the continuous upgrade of the eGovFrame. Furthermore, MOSPA continues to identify and leverage developer talent by annually hosting community-wide contests such as the largely successful Super Developer Korea contest of eGovFrame.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Built through public and private partnership, e-Government is being adopted nationwide. Our most successful outputs are listed below.
Single Open Standard Platform Promoted Nationwide: Since its launch in 2009, 433 e-Government systems (USD 1.2 billion in size) have been implemented and applied to 77.1% of the government service reference model of Enterprise Architecture in Korea. Of these projects, 185 were for central government, 169 were for public institutions and 76 were for for local government. The framework has been designated and is currently being used as the common standard for the development and operation of various information systems used by the central government and other public institutions, without being limited to a specific system from certain agencies. In fact, this platform has recorded over 300,000 downloads, which is the highest number of downloads for local open source software, and is gaining prominence within the private sector as well, such as Meritz(financial industry), Lotte(retail industry), Hyundai(automobile industry), etc. Since e-Government can also be applied to foreign government systems, it is currently being applied as the implementation and operation software platform for eleven IT projects in seven different countries.
Strengthening Capacity and Raising Competitiveness of SMEs: From 2009, free training courses to SME developers have been provided to strengthen the capacity of SMEs. To date, 2,692 SME developers have completed technical training and 7,692 people have participated in framework dissemination seminars. Currently, 9,410 developers from the private sector are using the Open Community to strengthen their development capacity as well as to exchange technology and information. Moreover, over 150 SMEs are reducing their redundant R&D cost for IT projects. Based on cost reduction and strengthened capacity, from 433 e-Government systems (USD 1.2 billion in size) implemented based on the standardized framework, SMEs have won 75% of these projects, increasing their participation.
Fostering and Building Open Innovation Ecosystem by Voluntary Contribution: eGovCenter provides free training and seminars to SMEs to keep abreast of the latest technologies – over 2,500 people earned certificates of eGovFrame training. Many of these developers go on to join the Open Community in order to contribute back to the eGovFrame project – making a stark jump from 1,000 members in 2010 to 9,410 members in 2013. Not only are new technology and information being shared, but the open innovation development model is establishing itself and will bring about voluntary contribution of functional improvements.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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eGovFrame is led by the MOSPA which is a government CIO entity. The MOSPA collaborates with other ministries to deploy a nationwide e-Government system, including the shared use of administrative information and the realization of seamless e-Government service. To promote and support eGovFrame, MOSPA appointed the NIA to steer eGovFrame project towards success. The NIA established the eGovFrame Center to promote and support eGovFrame; all relevant information gathered is evaluated and analyzed, of which results are reflected in the relevant projects. Moreover, to facilitate and promote timely monitoring and evaluation, various activities have been incorporated into a performance evaluation system for e-Government support projects run by the government for more comprehensive management.
The eGovFrame Center performs comprehensive monitoring and evaluation.
Because the standard framework is OSS that can be downloaded and used by anyone, its use and performance is not easy to evaluate on a nationwide scale. To effectively deal with this issue, the eGovFrame Center is responsible for (i) monitoring and evaluating the level of satisfaction of all affected participants, (ii) carrying out developer training satisfaction surveys and (iii) providing performance feedback through presentations of “best practices” and gathering of participant opinions.
The eGovFrame portal surveys its users for satisfaction, identifying the needs and ways to improve the framework. Surveys are also administered after technical training is provided to the main users of the framework, which are the developers. In this regard, requirements demanded by actual users are eventually reflected in the framework. As of 2011, NIA periodically presents best practices, implementation strategies and successful project case studies to the public sector, private enterprises and research institutions. Reaching over 500 participants every year, these presentations have alleviated any anxiety presented over the framework and have shaped the consensus for the profound need and effectiveness of eGovFrame in strengthening the competitiveness of SMEs. In fact, there continues to be much demand for the diverse and systematic technical support and further training opportunities.
The Korean government performs monitoring and evaluation through the e-Government Projects.
This project was planned and implemented as part of the e-Government Support Project operated by the government; as such, monitoring and evaluations are performed through the performance evaluation system of the e-Government projects. Four indicators from the standard framework are: (i) appropriateness of project management, (ii) user satisfaction, (iii) number of eGovFrame open source download and (iv) number of systems and projects using the standard framework.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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To standardize the software framework, the main obstacle was gaining consensus across such a wide range of stakeholders and stubborn resistance to OSS.
Concerns over Quality and Stability by Government Clients: Government cited concerns about adopting OSS which could not be trusted. To build confidence, MOSPA applied eGovFrame initially to 7 pilot projects, which proved the framework’s superior quality upon successful completion. Additionally, these concerns were countered by the government’s establishment of the eGovFrame center to provide technical support and direct onsite support including continuous upgrades.
Conflicting Market Interests of Vendors: Both large and small vendors expressed great apprehension over the loss of market share. To solve this, MOSPA established an open and transparent process, consisting of continuous communication and feedback throughout different channels such as surveys, public hearings and interviews. The aim was to better understand and address the key issues and concerns, as well as to emphasize the collective benefits of eGovFrame. MOSPA then set up an open “ecosystem”, consisting of seminars and workshops, as a forum to address these concerns and explain the benefits. They spent much time on developing the proper architecture and analyzing IT companies’ frameworks. Because the framework addressed stakeholders’ concerns and enhanced their collective benefits, they found it hard to ignore the framework and finally could be motivated to get involved in it.
Developer Resistance to OSS: Developers were concerned about quality and legality of OSS usage. In response, NIA ensured that proper training and regular seminar were provided and changes to OSS could be made by only authorized persons. In this regard, the eGovFrame community has a formal structure with four levels of membership: project management committee, committer, developer, group/user group with oversight from the Supreme council. Any important change to eGovframe is subject to rigorous peer review and version-management procedures.
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