Busan is good

[GLOBAL FORUM ON REINVENTING GOVERNMENT]Share the spirit of innovation

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If you are an innovative thinker who constantly ponders the ways of improving your surroundings and country, you will want to visit the International Innovation Exhibition to get some specific ideas and meet brilliant people from around the globe who have implemented their ideas into reality. The exhibition takes place at the COEX hall starting today and runs until May 27.

The exhibition is a side event of the 6th Global Forum, presenting innovative applications from various countries. Individual booths will be set up by 126 organizations from 25 countries to share their dynamic strategies for E-governance and transparent enterprise management.

The exhibition provides an opportunity for nations and institutions to learn from the successful examples of others. This will be a chance to build an international reinvention network encouraging mutual cooperation and understanding of participating countries and organizations.

The exhibition will consist of four zones: the Korean, Foreign, Business and Public Institution Pavilions.

The Korean Pavilion features all government ministries. For example, the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development will present a future model of a state-of-the-art learning environment where everyone is connected through e-learning, and the Ministry of National Defense will present a robot system and air force cyber tactical training system.

A few cities and provinces will also be presenting ideas for specialization, for example, Busan will present its U-City Project and summer beach card system in which everything on the beach can be paid for with a smart card.

A recurrent theme of the exhibition is the trend of everything going online to create a ubiquitous system - everything monitored and interconnected by an integrated computer network.

In the Business Pavilion, IBM Korea will present an "on-demand government," an integrated network of government institutions with civil organizations and corporations which will enable a flexible and effective response to the rapidly changing demands of the external environment.

For specific measures, IBM Korea will present a "congestion charging system" which aims to reduce traffic congestion by creating a toll system that incurs extra toll charges at periods of heavy congestion.

BM Korea will also present a "smart surveillance system," an intelligent system that discerns and selects specific targets for surveillance, eliminating the need to monitor everything over a constant period of time.

Such systems will be of interest to airline services, harbor facilities and the military.

IBM will also present the successful cases of integrated Web services in New York City, where information about the complicated registration process for new businesses was integrated onto one Web site. Mississippi's success in integrating all government institutions under one system will also be shown.

Additional presentations include e-learning solution for public institutions, spam mail protection, public record management system for e-governance and a Web-based reporting system for corporations.

IBM's director of global e-environment, Jeffrey Rhoda, will be taking part in the exhibition while leading seminars at the KAIST about IBM's "on-demand government" strategy and exchanging opinions with Korean government officials.

In the Foreign Pavilion, there will be 51 entities from 25 different countries, ranging from public sector reform in Thailand, modernization of customs in Turkey, to electronic police system for the police force in South Africa.

Those who are interested in heritage management and conservation will enjoy Egypt's Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage, presenting the secret of preserving and documenting Egypt's tangible and intangible cultural and natural heritage.

The CULTNAT aims to be positioned among the significant attempts for the preservation of the world's precious cultural and natural heritage. They will introduce their comprehensive database which summarizes Egypt's cultural heritage of more than 5,000 years.

They will also share their strategy of participating in the development of national cultural policy, building awareness about the heritage using electronic and physical publishing media.

From Canada, the Centre for Affordable Water & Sanitation Technology, a humanitarian organization, will share their know-how of building organizations' capacity for providing safe water to the community. CAWST empowers communities by partnering with local organizations and delivering training in water, sanitation and hygiene that translates complex technological and engineering principles into hands-on, interactive learning to reach the world's poor.

The CAWST is internationally recognized as a top 10 finalist in the Water Action Competition at the World Water Forum and Top 40 Best Practices to Improve the Human Living Environment.

Since its inception in 2001, CAWST has impacted over 350,000 people in 28 countries with improved water and has trained 200 organizations.

From France, the International Workshop of Planning and Urban Design will introduce the way their workshop works, providing an international and multicultural meeting place for professionals dealing with land use, town planning and urban development. The workshop functions as a think tank and place for debate, leading to a "freedom of design and professionalism."

The workshop's philosophy is to use an ecological approach to sustainable town planning and urban development. When planning and designing, they take the environment, ecology, economy, social interaction and architecture into consideration.

Their working method is to compose teams with experts and young professionals around a project, making concrete propositions to consider all planning levels. The cultural plurality and diversity of experts from all academic disciplines is what makes the workshop a success. The exhibition will show specifically how the workshop process works.

In the Public Institution Pavilion, 10 NGOs will be showing models to prevent corruption, enhance transparency and promote voluntary service. Participating NGOs include Transparency International, World Aid, Greenpeace, and Global Exchange.

Exhibition hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and admission is free of charge. Representatives of the Member States of the United Nations, experts from international organizations and leading activists of business, academia, and civil society will attend. For more information, visit www.6thglobalforum.org

 

 

The source of news : The Korea Herald  By Kwon Ji-young  2005.05.24