서강대학교

목차

This study investigates critical success factors for e-Government projects overseas by comparing them with factors that have contributed to the success of e-Government projects in Korea. Success factors are explored for three different stages of a project: planning, acquisition and implementation.
The investigation begins with an analysis of product competitiveness to determine how viably the Korean e-Government system can compete in overseas markets. Looking at statistical data on software from Korea and abroad, we describe the special characteristics of Korea’s IT service market, in which the share of the captive market, notably, is quite high. We then examine how the product and market competitiveness of its e-Government industry can assist in the country’s bid to export its e-Government system abroad. Drawing on related literature, we argue that the target export markets for the Korean e-Government systemare developing countries, in particular, emerging countries in Southeast Asia, and present an export strategy combining exports with official development assistance, both in the form of loans or grants.
Success factors for acquiring IT service system projects and implementing them, identified in this study, are related to demand sources, suppliers, enabling technologies and product quality, general environment and government support. Based on these success factors, we designed a survey questionnaire to gather data needed for empirical analysis. The questionnaire was finalized using expert input obtained from in-depth interviews and brainstorming sessions. The sample surveyed consisted of government IT officers involved in programs to export the Korean e-Government system, overseas marketing officers of software companies and officials of export support organizations. Basic statistical analysis on 48 total responses returned was performed using the SPSS 12.0 package. A t-test was also performed to determine the relative importance of detailed items.
Items were assigned a score according to their relative importance by setting the baseline item score to 100, and it was arranged so that the total number of questionnaire items was identical for all responses returned. The relative scores obtained through these steps were then used for the comparative analysis of success factors, between Korean e-Government projects and overseas projects, and between the pre-project phase and project implementation phase.
The results of the analysis revealed that IT service firms, in other words, system suppliers, played a crucial role for the successful acquisition and implementation of an e-Government project, both in Korea and overseas. Supplier-side factors such as the organization and manpower of the company which is the main contractor of an informatization project, the latter’s relationship with stakeholders such as government institutions that are buyers of the systems, service users and other related organizations, and cooperation with small and medium-size software companies that are co-contractors of the project and local firms of the country in which the project is based, were common factors contributing to the success of both acquisition and implementation of an e-Government project in Korea as well as overseas.
Meanwhile, the leadership of government agencies who are the demand sources for e-Government systems, and their organizational capacity, which are considered among critical success factors in Korean e-Government projects, proved comparatively less important for projects outside Korea. On the other hand, the Korean government’s support strategies and activities toward the expansion and growth of the software market appeared to have a greater importance for overseas projects than projects in Korea.
These differences may be explained by the special characteristics of developing countries that are the target markets for Korean e-Government exports and the type of market entry, namely, through official development assistance. In developing countries where national ICT infrastructure is obsolete or underdeveloped, and informatization manpower is generally scarce, the capabilities of system buyers, in other words, government agencies, play a significantly lesser role in both the successful acquisition and implementation of an e-Government project. The following items playa far greater role than government agencies’ capabilities in these countries: support measures such as government-level exchange and cooperation, development of an inter-country cooperation system and creation of informatization demand, and the expansion of official development assistance loans and grants.
Also of note is the fact that some of the factors long considered among the most critical success factors both in Korea and overseas, such as project management capabilities, technical feasibility and expandability of systems, proved less essential than was previously thought. These three factors were somewhat more important for e-Government projects in Korea than forprojects in emerging market countries, in part due to the difference in systems and enabling technologies used. However, the phenomenon seems to have been caused mainly by the fact that the Korean e-Government industry has acquired project management capabilities and a considerable stock of software technology through the course of carrying out the 31 projects under the Korean government’s e-Government initiative begun in 2003, on the one hand, and, on the other, that servicing and upgrading existing systems is a higher priority in Korea where public administration informatization has phased into a maturity stage, than developing and implementing new systems.
Success factors which show a sharp disparity in relative importance, between Korean and overseas projects were the following: among factors influencing the pre-project phase, the relationship with stakeholders such as government agencies that are the customers of e-Government systems, users of e-Government services and other related organizations were noticeably more important for overseas projects than for projects in Korea. As for the project implementation phase, a broadly-shared awareness of the importance of informatization projects, the understanding of information environments and the Korean government’s strategies and support activities to assist with the development of new IT services markets were among the success factors that were more crucial for overseas projects than for projects in Korea:
In contrast, for e-Government system projects in Korea, we found that the leadership of government agencies in informatization initiative and their organizational capabilities mattered much more than they did for overseas projects, for both the pre-project phase and project implementation phase. Also critical for the success of an informatization project in Korea were project management capabilities such as planning, progress monitoring, risk management and resource management, for the implementation phase; and technical feasibility and the expandability of systems for the pre-project phase.
The Korean government’s strategies and activities to assist with the development of the software market seem to have a greater impact on overseas projects than on projects in Korea, during the implementation phase. The practical implication of this finding is that the Korean government’s support programs for IT service exports, which have thus far mostly concentrated on the project development stage (to the point of acquisition of overseas projects by Korean firms), to be more effective, should be extended in scope to cover also the project implementation stage and the post-project stage (system maintenance and servicing), and should perhaps even include measures to make an inroad into the markets of countries’ neighboring target markets.