Starting this year, the Ministry of the Interior will hold test runs of selected public services based on advanced IT.
It will also support a total of 32 intelligent e-government projects that focus on making it easier for people to use public services.
The ministry and the National Information Society Agency will begin test-operations of the four IT-based public services over two years, starting in 2017. The four selected services are a healthcare service for seniors who live by themselves in the remote countryside, a nationwide lifesaving search and rescue system, a safety management system for exporting and importing dangerous materials, and, finally, a so-called “u-sharing community service” that is backed by local community-oriented smartphone apps.
The Ministry of the Interior will begin test runs of four new IT-based public services starting this year. One of them is a new nationwide search and rescue service that sends GPS coordinates of a missing person on the mountainside to rescue workers. The photo shows rescue workers from the Miryang Fire Station as they help an injured hiker down from the mountainside.
The healthcare service for seniors is designed to share real-time information about the patient’s health condition. It’s specifically for senior citizens who live alone in the countryside. The service involves wearable devices that can conduct radiocardiograms, check their blood pressure and function as a “digital medicine cabinet.”
Concerning search and rescue, when a person is lost in the mountains, a nationwide search and rescue system can locate the missing person and send real-time information to rescue workers who will be monitoring a map. It can help rescue workers decide which area to search and how many rescue workers to dispatch for the rescue.
Another public service to be test-run over the next few years is a safety management system for exporting and importing dangerous materials. Using a beacon — a type of smartphone-based, short-distance communication technology — the service will share via smartphone information about dangerous materials that are being exported and imported so as to help people take immediate measures when an accident occurs.
Finally, the fourth IT-based government service is the so-called “U-sharing community service.” This program allows neighborhood residents to share information about discounts or local sales, toy rentals, parcel holding service, and other classifieds-related information that used to all be done off-line. The online service is based on local, community-level apps. The program will begin its test run in Seocho-gu District, Seoul.
The Ministry of the Interior will invest KRW 126.3 billion this year into 32 e-government projects in order to build ‘intelligent e-government systems.’ The ministry held a hearing session to inform the press about its e-government support projects in Seoul on Jan. 24.
Meanwhile, the ministry announced on Jan. 23 that it will invest KRW 126.3 billion into 24 e-government support projects that focus on building an “intelligent e-government.”
The support projects are divided into four categories: “customized services,” “safe society,” “convenient government” and “pan-governmental infrastructure.” These projects are designed to establish a foundation for the next-generation of online government services, so that the government can better reflect changes in technology, such as the IoT, cloud computing, big data and mobile technology. By making these investments, the ministry hopes to be able to provide one-stop administration services to all citizens, so that any individual will have access to a wide variety of e-government services by logging in to one “digital one pass” system. The ministry also plans to provide user administration services that are necessary and that are part of citizens’ day-to-day routines, as per their age and lifestyle.
The ministry further plans to establish a security system to respond to any cyber attack by modifying its data management systems at the pan-national level.
The most money will be spent on the eight projects in the “safe society” category, where the ministry plans to invest KRW 44.8 billion. This includes the project to integrate all emergency telephone numbers into just three services: 119 for disasters, 112 for crimes and 110 for other civil complaints. It also includes a maritime safety program that’s designed to prevent sinkings or capsizes, and to stop people from going missing.
The ministry will inject KRW 30.9 billion into 10 projects in the “pan-governmental infrastructure” category. These include designating and standardizing a “national master data” database, and establishing a next-generation IT security system that uses artificial intelligence.
The ministry will spend KRW 26.3 billion on seven projects in the “customized services” section. These include the integration of administrative services by pushing for a more innovative civil service at Korean embassies overseas. When the project is complete, the ministry hopes that the birth abroad registration system will be shortened from more than a month to within a week for citizens who reside overseas. Another project here is to fund a conflict mediation system regarding fair trade practices.
The ministry will inject KRW 24.3 billion into seven projects in the “convenient government” category, too. These include improving the management of non-Korean citizens who reside in Korea, and improving the immigration screening process, in order to better deal with the rising number of non-citizens living in Korea.
By Yoon Sojung
Korea.net Staff Writer
Photos: Ministry of the Interior, Miryang Fire Station
arete@korea.kr
