| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
|
|
To achieve the goal successfully, MOSPA made an initial move of revising the law and rules that promote the usage of DCS. Secondly, MOPSA settled a strategy of analyzing current situation and desired future to fill in the gap. By this analysis of as-is and to-be, MOSPA could implement the right development strategy.
After launching the system, MOSPA ceaselessly started its upgrade plan to guarantee it to work as the collaboration tool for every government officials.
Below are the summary of the action plan MOSPA implemented.
1st step: Revising the law and rule to put the cornerstone for DCS
MOSPA first revised the “Rule of Public Administration Efficiency Management” so that it contained the ground for introducing DCS. Additionally, the revised rule also contained the recommendation for ministers to use the videoconference system primarily when conference participants are located remotely from each other. By recommending ministers to use DCS, the Rule asks them to show an example for lower level co-workers. The revision acted as a cornerstone for establishing and promoting DCS.
2nd Step: Business Process Reengineering & Information Strategy Planning
MOSPA then conducted a business process reengineering (BPR) & information strategy plan (ISP) which analyzed the problem of status quo, which mainly indicates the inefficiency of off-line meetings, and how-to deal with those problems to reach the goal of smooth transition to the advanced collaboration system.
3rd step: Establishing the Digital Collaboration System
With a reference from the second step of BPR & ISP, MOSPA built DCS through the contract with top-notch private enterprise with cutting edge technology. The key function was the on-line virtual collaboration interface providing almost-equal familiarity to the off-line collaboration tools. Various functions like co-reporting and document sharing were the main features which enabled this familiarity. The other main function was the Unified Communicator (UC) which provided PC based videoconferencing, messaging, and chatting for governmental workers in a distance with each other.
4th step: Upgrading DCS toward the Integrated Governmental Communication System
Through the development process in 2011, the current DCS was launched in early 2012 and has been used in almost all government ministries and agencies for two years. It obviously gained a notion from the officials as a new tool for communication. However, many of its functions other than PC videoconferencing are still new for most officials and were not used frequently.
To solve this problem and improve the user friendliness of popular PC videoconferencing function, MOSPA has launched the upgrading project of DCS in September 2013 toward its next version: Integrated Governmental Communication System (IGCS). The IGCS will make a debut in January 2014.
The key of this upgrade to the IGCS is seamlessly integrating DCS to the On-nara, the groupware every official uses for work. By integrating those two systems, civil services can easily collaborate in the process of executing their tasks. For example, while making a report or a correspondence, officials will be able to consult it with officials in other ministries by sharing it through IGCS.
The other key function of IGCS would be ensuring mobility in the work flow by providing mobile services through smart-phones and tablets.
|
|
| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
|
|
The main stakeholders are President Park’s office, Office for Government Policy Coordination (OGPC), MOSPA, and all other governmental branches.
President Park, Geunhye who started her term in Feb 2013 declared the Government 3.0 initiative as a vision for government innovation. Through active information disclosure with frequent communication and cooperation with private sector, Government 3.0 aims at strengthening the competency of the government. To implement Government 3.0, President Park continuously asks all the ministers to remove barriers between offices through DCS.
OGPC is the office under the direct management of the Prime Minister and controls all 155 collaboration projects among government offices. OGPC uses DCS to monitor and manage the progress of each project on a real time basis.
MOSPA is the ministry in charge of Korean e-government establishment. MOSPA initiated DCS initiative in 2010 and launched the system in April 2012. Currently MOSPA manages and monitors the system, and recently started to upgrade DCS to the next stage of IGCS.
All other government branches are the primary users of DCS. They use this system in two ways: DCS is mostly used as a communication and collaboration tool between two different ministries. As an auxiliary usage, it also works as a communication tool within the same ministry: departments and branches use it as a communication system for other department and branches apart.
The best example of the second case would be the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW). MOHW holds a head meeting on every Monday which requires the attendance of all nine national hospital presidents. Several national hospitals are about 500km away from the MOHW headquarter and presidents of those hospitals usually spent a whole day for attending just an hour meeting. Now presidents attend the PC videoconferencing and saving their valuable time for hospital management and patients caring.
|
| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
|
|
This DCS initiative got its financial resource from the “e-government project budget” of MOSPA which financially supports e-government initiatives of each ministry and agency. Once an initiative is selected as the e-government project, the whole budget will be reimbursed by MOSPA. To be selected as the e-government project, each initiative should meet at least one of three requirements below.
First, a project should maximize its effectiveness by connecting systems each office established or connecting information each office stores.
Second, a project should provoke the innovation in public sector by maximizing the efficiency or significantly improving the public service.
Third, a project should have great importance to the ministry or office but cannot be financed by itself because it requires a large amount of development budget.
Fortunately, DCS falls in the first and second category simultaneously and thus selected as the e-government project in 2011. As a result, the cost was fully paid by the MOSPA e-government project account.
To be fortunate enough, DCS initiative was executed by tech-expert officials who had been working in e-government business more than a decade. The leader and main supervisor was then vice minister of MOSPA Kim, Namsuk who had more than twenty years of experience in e-government and national information infrastructure construction. Vice minister Kim and all the staffs used their profound knowledge and experience to make DCS a user-friendly and useful system. Also, the private development staffs from top-notch IT companies were involved in the initiative by contract.
With these best staffs, DCS was built and upgraded in three phases.
In the first phase from Nov 2010 to Feb 2011, half a billion KRW (approximately USD 500,000) was spent in business process reengineering and information strategy planning as a preliminary stage.
In the second phase, from Nov. 2011 to Mar. 2012, 0.8 billion KRW (approximately USD 800,000) of the e-government budget were spent to build DCS.
Now, in the third phase, it is undergoing upgrade from DCS to IGCS and the budget is about 1.8 billion KRW (approximately USD 1,800,000). The upgrade will be finished by the end of year 2013.
|
|
| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
|
|
The foremost and most visible output of DCS is valuable time otherwise was spent on the street between Seoul and Sejong. Simultaneously, it also saves the taxpayers’ money spent for transportation of officials significantly.
MOSPA in 2010 made an estimation of time and cost that would be spent within the government annually for business travels after its division into Seoul and Sejong in 2013. The result was astonishingly serious: 42 billion KRW (approximately USD 42 million) will be spent and 1.85 million hours will be abused on the street annually.
Every year, about 110,000 government employees travel between offices average 7 times for business meetings. When the government complexes are mostly located in and near Seoul, the time and cost for these short trips was almost ignorable. However, after relocation of more than half of ministries and offices to Sejong, the average hours for round-trip among agencies would go up to 2.4 hours and average cost would reach 26,000 KRW (USD 26). Moreover, average hourly pay of 12,000 KRW (USD 12) for employees which would be wasted during the trip should be considered as the opportunity cost.
Therefore, if no means to substitute these travels existed, 20 billion KRW (110,000 officials * 26,000 KRW* 7 times a year) would be spent annually on business trips itself. Another 22 billion KRW (110,000 * 12,000 KRW* 2.4hours * 7 times) would be the yearly opportunity cost. Finally, the total hours all the employees would waste on the trip would reach up to 1.85 million hours (110,000 officials * 2.4 hours * 7 times)
Let us assume that only a quarter of these travels can be substituted by PC videoconferencing. It means DCS, which costs only 1.3 billion KRW so far, would save more than 10 billion KRW every year. It is just a small visible part of its greater outcome. The products from 460,000 hours (1.85 million hours * 1/4) saved by DCS would be beyond imagination: Many services for citizens would be greatly improved. Higher rank officials would use these valuable times for policy design. Employees who should have worked overtime to cover up wasted hours on the street could spend their valuable evening time with friends and families. Local economy of new Sejong city would be boosted because government officials would not spend money in Seoul for their after-hour activities any longer.
|
|
| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
|
|
Since the initiative was selected as the “e-government project” and thus obtained the whole budget support, careful management and evaluation was followed by the rule and regulation applied for e-government project monitoring. However, that was only a part of deliberative management for DCS development initiative.
As DCS initiative was initiated as the important project coping with forecasted government division in 2012, top level managers were involved in monitoring the project on a regular basis.
Then first vice minister of MOSPA (MOSPA has two ministers) Kim, Namsuk took supervisory role voluntarily and periodically monitored the progress of the initiative thoroughly. For example, weekly and monthly progress reports including risks and obstacles were discussed in periodical meetings held by the vice minister. The director-general and directors of e-government participated the meeting and shared the results. Also, in order to resolve the various issues occurring during the project, consulting group consisting of senior civil services and private sector experts were also organized.
Monitoring and evaluating the progress was implemented by focusing on three factors.
First, meeting the users’ needs had the top priority. During the development, supervisors continually asked software developing staffs to check the users’ needs and reflect them to the system.
Second, keeping the schedule was valued. The supervisors monitored the interim reports on every process weekly and monthly to ensure system to be established on time. It was because the system should be in use prior to the planned government division at the end of 2012.
Lastly, the stability and performance of the system should have been secured. DCS had a large number of projected users, up to 100,000 central government employees. Also, it had to work smoothly under the condition of transmitting large amount of video data. Therefore, it had to be examined carefully to ensure stability and frequent performance tunings were done with careful inspections on each component.
After its launching in April 2012, MOSPA frequently asked government users to send feedbacks. As a result, MOSPA made a minor upgrade in June 2013 to make users log-in more comfortably and use the functions easily.
|
|
| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
|
|
The main obstacles Korean government faced during the implementation period of DCS initiative were the “psychological objection of users to a new system”.
It is a common phenomenon in every time and place that the cutting-edge system is not welcomed by the majority of the people for a certain period of time because it is unfamiliar. DCS, a unique and up-to-date system, could not be the exception. When its initial development plan was discussed in 2006-the year the government division was decided- the Planning and Budget Office (PBO) officially objected the DCS initiative. PBO thought it was too early for government officials to accept this state-of-the-art virtual collaboration concept.
Even after its final launching in 2012, it gained only a small number of early adopters who prefer accepting new technology and fresh ideas. MOSPA decided to overcome this “psychological objection of the majority” by improving DCS toward more user-friendly one. The original DCS was a stand-alone application which required time-consuming application launching and the burdensome log-in process.
MOSPA made a modification for DCS in Jun 2013 to integrate it to the On-nara BPS, the groupware every public official in Korea uses for their daily work. After modification, civil servants simply log in to the On-nara to start their work and they can use DCS simultaneously without any additional process. Moreover, DCS menu is seamlessly blended into the On-nara menu.
As a result for this minor but significant make-up, the usage rate of DCS increases very swiftly. In January 2013, only 325 people used this system out of 100,000 potential users. In November, the user number went up to 7,884; a 24 times increase in less than a year.
|