+ BACKGROUND, CHALLENGES AND OBJECTIVES

Background

Government officers have to consider a dozen factors before they can decide how much tax to levy on a property; they would have to collect information from various sources to calculate the total land area, examine the surrounding area to estimate the value of the property, and decide how much they would tax the land.

A geospatial information system (GIS) can help with the analysis and the determination of the resources, such as land and capital, into the decision-making processes. GIS is a scientific tool that visually illustrates spatial information and helps with the efficient conduct of spatial investigation (Ganapati 2011). GIS is now significantly used in the governments, businesses, and researches for a broad range of applications including land use planning, infrastructure and utility development, demographic analysis and investigation of environmental resources, etc. Particularly, the use of GIS in local governments has considerably increased since the 1990s

Challenges

1. Diffusion of broadband access
Another major barrier for the facilitation of any advanced geospatial information services is that citizens need to have access to broadband services in their communities. In fact, most cities in developing and undeveloped countries have a relatively low access rate compared to that of City of Seoul, which means it is relatively inconvenient to access the government geospatial information. According to a recent ranking, Seoul ranks first in the world in terms of broadband diffusion among citizens. Therefore, it is important to ensure affordable broadband access as a fundamental condition for the facilitation of geospatial information service. In other words, ensuring that every citizen has equal access to broadband capability is a pre-requirement for geospatial data and to advance consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety, etc.

2. Low use of smart phone applications
In the case of cites in developing countries, even though they may own a cell phone, most citizens are not used to using mobile phone applications on their smart phones. This has to do with the fact that data plans are still very expensive. Moreover, most citizens in those areas have no interest in accessing government geospatial information because they still do not trust online information and prefer offline face-to-face contact when getting information. In this case, geospatial information is not much use to the citizens.

3. Privacy concerns
Along with the barriers mentioned above, privacy concerns are another barrier against the facilitation of GIS. In fact, most citizens are concerned about their personal privacy intrusion by both government and private firms. The lift on the prohibition of online cookies to track user statistics for websites has allowed governments to track information about their users. Mobile phone applications and other websites based on desktop PCs that are providing geospatial information to the public are utilizing private information associated with IP addresses and cell phone numbers of social media accounts to provide a better GIS experience to the citizens.
For example, the Map-Tagging Service and the 3D indoor information of the Seoul Metropolitan Government. When the citizens use the “check-in” function from their mobile devices, the government is actually using private location data from smart phones to provide information about historic locations around the city of Seoul, or provides tips to citizens about the historic background of the location or the museums. Through every check-in, the government tracks not only personal information of each citizen, but also their geographic location

Objectives

To provide Citizens with Customized Public Services, Create Jobs, Build New Engines of Growth
For example, the SMG has produced fundamental digital map products and developed various GIS application systems such as roads, urban planning information, water supply, sewerage, land information, geotechnical, underground facilities, and a new address management system. Recently, the Seoul has started to provide 3D map services and has put efforts to improve the accuracy of the digital maps and their measurements.

+ ACTIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION

Government-to-Citizen (G2C)

“Government-to-Citizen (G2C)” is a new SMG initiative which emphasizes the importance of explaining the government policies or activities to the citizens. The Seoul Map Website and Smart Complaint Filing initiative are part of the G2C services, which were introduced to provide various spatial information regarding maps, transportation, land, environment, and public institutions. To be specific, it provides citizens with a variety of content types such as life information maps, statistics maps, and other spatial information created since 1995.

The SMG’s website of open space information provides the spatial information above for all citizens to use. Furthermore, the information includes the maps that private sectors do not provide such as foreign language based, building types, and ecology environments in Seoul.

1. Smart Seoul Map Website
The Smart Seoul Map Website was built to make spatial information about various areas of Seoul available to the citizens and make it easy to check. Its function can be divided into various sub-functions; the ‘Map Service’, the ‘Urban Information Map Service’, the ‘Statistics Map Service’, the ‘Spatial Information by Field’, and the ‘Participatory Map.’

2. Smart Complaint Register in Seoul Map Website
The Smart Complaint Register service allows citizens to use the applications on their mobile devices to report a variety of complaints, such as sidewalk block damage, illegally dumped trash, illegally parked cars, and allows them to mark the exact locations on the map or attach photos. It is available both through the website and app.

3. 3D Indoor Spatial Information
Information about indoor spatial information has been raised. Thus, the SMG started to building 3D indoor spatial information in terms of overall the city such as subway stations since May 2013. A pilot project for web service launched in September 2013 and the initial project included three subway stations and three public buildings. This project aimed to provide indoor datasets in order to provide available information about public safety and navigations to citizens. Currently, the SMG has expanded to the service targets of the “Seoul Map Service” through mobile applications. The SMG has made public various data so that the private sector can utilize it and produce several contents in terms of cultural and sightseeing facilities. Moreover, 3D indoor information service enables for disabled people and senior citizens to approach to the public service more easily. In addition, it is used for fire drills of a head office of firefighting through a safety map for firefighting for the public safety.

4. Infrastructure of Spatial Information 
The Government 3.0. which has the key word such as openness, sharing, communication, and collaboration, has tried to communicate and collaborate with citizens rather than simply making public information. In this context, about 80% of total public information should be related to location and geospatial information for communicating with citizens. Therefore, the SMG built LBS(LOCATION BASED SERVICE), which can be used through the smart phone, for enabling the citizen to comprehend the public administration better.

5. Map Tagging Service
The prominent function of the geospatial platform is the Map-Tagging function. A public officer of the city inserts the locational information of status including ‘Location Reference System’ in the excel type of files and makes the geospatial information available for being served. Non-specialists could correct, delete, and add the information easily.

+ OUTCOMES AND IMPACTS

When complaints are received at the Seoul Smart Complaints Register, they will be filed and processed through the “120 Dasan Call Center.” In particular, if citizens’ complaints involve road and sidewalk damages, noises complaints, or female and child safety issues in certain areas, prompt actions are taken by the authorities to resolve them.

During the processing, the reports are received and the results can be viewed via smart phone or Internet website. The details of the process, including total time elapsed or expected time to resolve the complaints are also sent via SMS to a registered phone number. Since the initial phase of the application ‘Smart Complaint Register,’ 760,000 cases were registered via this application. Among the registered cases, 280,638 cases were reports of illegal parking which takes the greatest proportion, 157,728 cases were about illegal advertisements, 88,915 cases were about illegally dumped trash, 51,698 cases were about damaged roads, and 28,732 cases were about destroyed sidewalk block.

This 3D indoor modeling service is currently conducted and provided by private corporations directly, while the Seoul Metropolitan Government plays the role of supporting this service by funding or providing fundamental data. Furthermore, 3D indoor modeling service plans to support the most vulnerable members of society, such as the elder citizens and the disabled, by providing addition information regarding access to transportation, as well as providing interior display or a fire safety map of buildings for safe evacuation.

From 2013 to 2016 December, about thirty departments of municipalities are utilizing the map-tagging service for providing public services with the citizen. The map-tagging services include the major investment initiatives, Seoul Circle Roads, facilities for bicycle, changing public administration of the SMG, flower streets in Spring/green streets in Summer/colorful streets in Fall, and other 105 kinds of services (adding 32 types of services in 2016)

+ REPLICABILITY AND SCALABILITY

Replicability

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The EPA webpage allows users to use the web-based GIS through Environmental Dataset Gateway (EDG). It allows every user who enters the website to search, find, and access geospatial resources produced by EPA’s program. Moreover, it connects other available geospatial metadata through ‘DATA.Gov’ and ‘GeoPlatform.gov’. A number of geospatial applications of EPA, such as ‘Air Quality Tools,’ ‘Water Quality Tools,’ ‘Neighborhood Tools,’ and ‘Waste Tools,’ enable users to approach and utilize various kinds of geospatial data (www.epa.gov)

STAGE (STAtistics & GEography), the Republic of Slovenia
The Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia has developed an integrated system for the provision of geospatial statistics through an instrument called STAGE, which stands for STAtistics and GEography. This application system deals with a broad range of variables collected and developed by different levels of administrative units.
Furthermore, this application utilizes a hierarchical grid to disseminate geospatial statistics as an open free geospatial statistical data source. The role of STAGE which produces and disseminate geospatial data is evaluated as one of the greatest contributions of official statistics to broad adaptation of geospatial data by user groups in Slovenia (United Nations, 2016, Economic and Social Council Report).

+ BUDGET AMOUNT

Budgetary disincentives

Governments often do not have the incentive to save the budget or spend less. Instead there is an incentive to show that the money budgeted for specific initiatives was spent and that future spending has to be increased. Therefore, existing initiatives by the governments that are already appropriated in the budget are pushed forward and there are no incentives to reassign budget categories and switch to off-the-shelf free third party applications, which can contribute to cheaper geospatial information services.