Questions/Answers

“mVoting” refers to Seoul City’s mobile voting system, which can be used by anyone in the private or public sector. The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) is committed to providing public services that increase public satisfaction by building a cooperative platform linking the city and the public and that reflects itsopinion in policymaking. SMG’s determination to work together with its citizenry, transcending ideology, class, and region, is driven by the vision of its master plan, Seoul Plan 2030, “People-Centered Seoul, a City with Happy People.” Seoul plans to use mVoting as a medium for communicating with the public and reflecting their opinions in municipal policymaking.mVoting is intended to provide its citizens with the opportunity to participate more actively in city governance by sharing their beliefs and offering their ideas. BecausemVotingtakes into account the opinions of a group of friends, colleagues, and/or members of the organization with which they are affiliated when making decisions, SMG expects that it will contribute to cultivating a mature sense of democracy and reduce inequality by spreading democracy as a fact of life.

SMG introduced mVoting to ensure the equal rights of every qualified inhabitant to participate in the city’s decision-making process. mVoting is a service through which Seoul voters can express their views on public policy through their mobile devices, removing all temporal and spatial constraints. With mVoting, citizens from all walks of life, regardless of region, sex, age, or class, can participate in the city’s policy-making process and propose their ideas to the city. In this respect, mVoting is a public service that effectively incorporates their voices into city governanceand pushes the SMG to be effective and accountable.

mVoting contributes to SDG 11, Sustainable cities and communities. A democratic city with population of 10 million cannot be sustainable without seriously considering its people’swishes about the future of the city. With a smartphone penetration rate of 85 percent, South Korea boasts a mature mobile environment. Seoul is taking advantage of this strength to readily and promptly collect resident input to provide the best possible public services.

In the past, SMGofficials enjoyed final authority on all public service policy decisions, from budgeting to policymaking, but failed to consider the needs and wishes of Seoul’scitizens. Not surprisingly, popular satisfaction with public service was low. City government, because it did not actively solicit direct input from the public, was unaware of and thus unresponsive to the demands of the public. The role of municipal government is,rather than making unilateral decisions, to actively encourage resident engagement in determining city policy; and further,to ensure that there is a working channel of communication between government andpeople. In this context, the city devised variedcitizen-centric approaches for monitoringpopular sentiment to improve the efficiency of public services. To this end,mVoting—using mobile devices owned by 85%of Seoul residents—makes the mVoting service universally accessible to all citizens via both smartphone (mobile app) andcomputer,ensuring that non-smartphone users are alsoincluded.SMG worked with citizen groupsfrom diverse fields throughout the process of developing mVoting with a wide range of functions.

The idea of mVoting could be innovative, but furthermore, the usage of mVoting is quite advanced. The mVoting service distinguishesbetween four types of voting: issue voting, in whichSMG asks respondents for their opinions on particular issues and then applies the resultto a wide array of administrative areas rather than making unilateral decisions; in-house voting, where the city collects opinions from its own employees; on-the-spot voting, used at particular events or during meetings; and public voting, where a participant asks other citizens to give their opinions on particular issues.

mVoting was originally developed by SMG. In 2013,Mayor Park Won-Soon initiated the idea of developing a communication channel befitting “Seoul’s status as an IT powerhouse.” Led by SMG, the city embarked on developing mVoting. After the launch of the service, SMG applied for a patent, equipped with an on-the-spot voting function combined with location information. The mVoting service has been well-received at home and abroad for its quality. It was named a finalist of the Barcelona Smart City Expo Awards and touted as an outstanding example at Metropolitan Solutions 2016 in Berlin.

mVoting was selected as a leading project of “Government 3.0” in 2014 by the National Ministry of the Interior and Safety. Government 3.0 emphasizes the values of “openness, sharing, communication, and cooperation,” all of which mVoting embraces. Starting 2019, SMG plans to make the Voting API service accessible to other cities. mVoting has been well-received around the world, and has been benchmarked by countries in Asia and Europe. In particular, Einthoven (the Netherlands) showed interest becausemVoting allows a large number of citizens to participate in voting;it plans to introduce a citizen participatory service modeled after mVoting.

mVoting can be operated on most computers. Development of the mVoting software was inexpensive; it requires only vote generationand aggregation. SMG’sdevelopment cost wasonly KRW 130 million. The city employed human resources, including a group of 13 experts and 50 general citizens throughout the entire mVoting development process. The expert group provided consultation regarding collectionof public feedback and IT application. The general citizen-user group made sure that mVoting had a user-friendly design, and monitored the website to filter low-quality content.

In the mobile era, mVoting is a clearly innovative communication channel; it connects government with its citizens through a prompt and convenient mobile medium, freeing users from all temporal and spatial constraints.mVoting will be useful because it makes possible a significant reductionin the enormous social cost of collecting public opinion through direct interviews, telephone surveys, and the like. In this respect, it can serve as an ideal alternative. With the popularization of smartphones, mobile social networking through social media channels such as Facebook is now an essential part of modern culture. In this respect, communication between SMG and its constituency through mobile devices and the resulting sharing of ideas and opinionswill continue.

Yes

Evaluation of mVoting has yet to be conducted. Rather other policies are evaluated based on mVoting. The Assessment Division at City Hall employs both mVoting and traditional surveys to assesspublic reaction to its major projects. In the evaluation process, the Information System Planning Bureau, which manages mVoting, monitors the entire voting process, from beginning to end, and suggests that the city make its decisions on incorporatingmVotingin its policymaking decisions publically accessible.

SMG uses the Seoul City evaluation planperformance index, which includes satisfaction with each item in administrative service areas: causes of dissatisfaction, number of agendas for mVoting, number of agendas reflectingmVoting results, and number of participants. Also, the division responsible for the operation of mVoting assesses annual management performance based on the accumulated number of mVotingmembers. The division conducts a survey of mVoting users regarding their satisfaction with the service in terms of convenience/inconvenience, promptness of responses, and accessibility.

According to the assessment, it is important for relevant city departments to make a special effort in order to address community issues through the participation of local residents. Accordingly, SMG is providing support for various activities such as user training and policy advertising to boost the morale of the relevant divisions.

SMG invited user participation throughoutthe process of planning and developing mVoting. As a result, a group of citizens with expertise in diverse fields, including civil servants, professors, legal experts, city council members, PR experts, and developers, drew up policy and PR guidelines, while a group,including members of the electorate, civil servants, experts in service fields, and designers, participated in evaluation of user-friendliness, design, and requirements. Diverse individuals and institutions, including government organizations, schools, civic groups, private organizations, and the general public participate in mVoting to collect and balance popular opinion. Teachers, parents, and educational institutions use mVoting to voice their opinions on school policy regarding parent participation in school affairs, improvement of student human rights, and prevention of school violence. Sponsors and volunteers of social cooperatives use mVoting to elect representatives, while the general public expresses their ideas and thoughts on social issues through mVoting so that their opinions can be reflected in policymaking.mVotingSMG has allowed citizens to identifyand prioritize public spending projects worth over KRW 50 billion every year. The number of citizens participating grows annually.

Through the mVoting service, SMG has learned that there had been latent demand for participation in public affairs. Many more citizens than expected showed interest in city policies and projects. mVoting is useful when conducting general surveys,but even more effective in increasing citizen engagement and allowing the city to formulate more diverse plans into policy actions. As a readily accessible mobile service for massive numbers of people, mVotingcangenerate a significant ripple effect.A major lesson from developing mVoting is that efforts to listen tothe citizenry are never enough.