Maeng Hyung-kyu, minister of public administration and security, and Sha Zukang, a Chinese diplomat who is currently the U.N. under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs, exchanged a letter of intent Wednesday in Barcelona, Spain, for the joint development of so-called "U.N. public administration knowledge space," his ministry said in a release.
The highly-wired country is a world leader in e-government systems for managing state finances, tariffs, public procurement, patent data and other administrative procedures and public records that promote efficiency and enable citizens to be more interactive with their government.
South Korea will provide its knowledge and technology for the US$6-8 million project being pushed by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said Park Min-sik, an official in charge of the e-government project.
The U.N. public administration knowledge space is a system for collecting and analyzing basic data on 192 U.N. member nations' e-government policies and infrastructure, the ministry said. The project will become a base for the U.N.'s efforts to construct a global electronic government, it added.
Earlier in the day, Seoul received this year's "global grand prize" in the United Nations' biannual assessment of 192 member states' level of electronic public administration.
The government scored the highest in the "e-government development" index and "e-participation" index for measuring public engagement of the U.N. Global E-government Survey 2010, the ministry said. The United States and Canada came next in the total e-government ranking.
Seoul previously ranked sixth in the "readiness" index and second in the "participation" index in 2008.
"South Korea's winning of the U.N. e-government global grand prize is an achievement resulted from a combination of the public's attention, the government's strong driving force and technological support by the country's information-technology industries," Maeng was quoted as saying at the awards ceremony in Barcelona.
"This award winning is expected to have a positive influence on South Korean IT and non-IT firms' exports of their commodities and service by helping improve the nation's brand image," the minister said.
South Korea has signed contracts worth $221 million with 25 countries, mostly Asian countries such as Indonesia, India, Vietnam, the Philippines and Pakistan, to export its knowhow and technology of building e-government systems over a decade.//Yonhap
reporter
Park Sae-jin
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