A city of 20 million people, Seoul has seen some of the most astonishing development of any city in the past 50 years. Cookie-cutter high rise apartment blocks abound along the subway network, and all of them have fiber-optic connections. 

Many of the apartments are “intelligent homes” where the appliances communicate with each other – and with the owners, using their mobile phones. If the refrigerator, for instance, discovers that it is out of items for dinner, it can order them itself, and notify the family using the mobile.

In South Korea, web surfing has become part of the infrastructure, and the mobile web (using WAP 2.0 standard) is everywhere. So being connected has become second nature to the people of a country where mobile TV, although not personalized, was introduced several years ago, and mobile phone is as important a means of communication as the personal computer.

Junghee Song, the Chief Information Officer and Vice Mayor of Seoul, said the city began moving toward hyper-connectivity in 1995, when officials implemented their first  groupware system to help decision-making among the civil servants. Now there are few decisions that are not taken electronically.

“Ultimately, this kind of development is about improving the quality of life our people, she says. “Citizens should be surrounded by government services. They should be able to enjoy secure, convenient and caring services from us in the government.”

But integration is not enough. New services must be created all the time to fulfill the vision, the latest being location-based services, part of the effort to take the city government mobile.

Nobody hates e-government, according to Song. All services in Korea are available online, with the exception of birth registration. A real baby must still be shown and identified. Baby vaccinations, most recently, were moved online. Parents are notified which vaccinations are due and when.

“The internet makes dialogue with citizens easy,” says Dr. Song. “And we are now delivering the same services on mobiles.”

Citizens can easily get information about which government services are open or closed, and where to find emergency services. The location-based services are even starting to be used by real-estate brokers, who want to show clients where the public offices and schools are in their neighborhood.

But when it comes to the network that runs the city services, there was no question about outsourcing. “We do not want to be an operator. We outsource the maintenance, but we want control of what is going on in our network, so we can guarantee our services,” says Dr. Song.

The city has peering agreement with all of the operators in the city, both mobile and fixed. The city cannot discriminate; services must be available to all. So it tests mobile services with all mobile operators, making sure the services work equally well.

The initial launch of a service may be done with one operator – location based services being a case in point – but within six months, the service will be available in all networks.