Consider a National Identification System

Bae Tae Hyon, the owner of a small trading company, has spent thousands of dollars in wages, taxes and bribes over the last decade securing licenses and permits from the city government.

Life has become much easier and less expensive, however, since Seoul introduced a comprehensive anti-graft program. The cornerstone is a new Internet-based system that tracks every permit application, its status, the official’s desk it is on and expected approval date--sharply reducing the opportunity for funny business.

“No matter how minor their position, Korean bureaucrats have always acted like kings,” Bae said recently in front of City Hall. “But the new system has made a huge difference. What used to take 12 visits and the odd envelope now takes a single visit.”

Seoul’s system, known as OPEN, has expanded in phases since its inception in 1999. In the process, it has emerged as a model not only for corruption-prone South Korea, but for scores of other developing nations. It also provides a test of technology’s ability to change a deeply rooted culture, in this case Korea’s centuries-old tradition of giving chonji--or peace of mind--envelopes to government officials.

The Korean-developed OPEN, short for “Online Procedures Enhancement for Civil Applications,” starts with the premise that payoffs are made in the shadows. Throw open and simplify procedures with the help of the Internet, the logic goes, and you reduce bureaucrats’, ability to abuse their power.

The program tracks building permits, private bus route changes, liquor licenses, waste disposal applications and 50 other matters that require approval. Businesspeople can monitor the progress online as an application moves from desk to desk, in much the same way Americans might track a package moving by private mail service from Boston to Buenos Aires.

“Seoul has been notorious as a pandemonium of bureaucratic irregularity and corruption,” said Mayor Goh Kun, OPEN’s unabashed champion. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Although fighting corruption is never easy, some say reformers in South Korea face a particularly tough job because of broad-based opposition to greater openness.

The bureaucracy would rather not lose the power it has wielded for generations. Companies don’t want anyone looking too carefully at their profits, entertainment budgets or miscellaneous expenses. And citizens often try to safeguard their own interests--even as they express outrage at corruption--by giving cash-filled envelopes to police chiefs, prosecutors or teachers.

“The importance of personal connections and cronyism are cliches we always hear about with Asian culture, but like many cliches there’s a lot of truth to them,” said David Kelleher, professor of public policy at South Korea’s Hoseo University. “Can technology change the underlying moral stance in the culture? That may be more than we can ask.”

Critics say OPEN’s role as a model for South Korean society also may be limited because it focuses on small transactions, not the slush-filled pipelines between large companies and government agencies on the local and national level. Most scandals over the last year have involved arms procurement, high-speed rail projects and airport construction contracts, not driver’s licenses.

“This is a petty corruption measure rather than a grand corruption measure,” said Park Jung Soo, research director with the Seoul Institute for Transparency, a nonprofit monitoring group. “The OPEN system can’t cure everything.”

Furthermore, while the system sounds good, there is still limited data on how effective it has been. “We haven’t seen enough evidence to know if it really works,” said Thomas Parks, program officer with the Asia Foundation. “It’s a really good concept and we’re not saying the technology isn’t there, we just don’t know yet.”

In addition, Mayor Goh’s broader objective may be getting a boost toward the president’s mansion, political analysts say, raising concerns that the system could crumble if he moves on or changes political strategy.

That said, even critics say the initiative represents a good start. Furthermore, with Seoul’s status as the capital and the home to more than 20% of the nation’s population, the program could spread to smaller cities. Seoul has offered the technology in the last few months to other municipalities for free.

Although a comprehensive study hasn’t been done, Goh says the early signs are encouraging. A survey by Gallup Korea commissioned by the city before OPEN went into effect found up to 38% of applicants gave bribes. A follow-up survey two years later found that number had fallen to 6%. The data may be inexact, Goh concedes, because people are reluctant to admit they made payoffs. But things seem to be moving in the right direction.

OPEN, which now boasts 3,500 online users a day, is the most visible part of Seoul’s efforts. However, the city also is cutting the number of regulations and making those that remain more specific. It is rotating officials to curtail fiefdoms, imposing a zero-tolerance program for those who abuse power, and soliciting e-mails arid, postcards from citizens to send complaints directly to the mayor.

Seoul also has started releasing on the Internet details on its major public procurement, although these are far more complex transactions with greater room for irregularities.

Folkard Wohlgemuth, a manager with the Berlin-based nonprofit Transparency International, disagrees that graft is an integral part of any culture.

“I’m convinced there’s no culture in the world where bribery and corruption as seen as the proper way to act,” he said. “If that were the case, it would be out in the open rather than always done under the table.”

Embarrassing scandals in the central government and National Assembly, more vocal foreign investors and tougher international competition also are putting pressure on national planners to bolster their own anti-corruption credentials.

South Korea recently passed a comprehensive anti-graft bill that creates a watchdog agency under the prime minister’s office. Although it doesn’t have direct investigative powers, it can coordinate probes by other agencies. And the’ central government is exploring its own Internet initiative.

South Korea is rated 42nd out of 91 nations by Transparency International in its 2001 report, with Finland at No. I considered least corrupt and Bangladesh at No. 91 the most. Although this is a six-notch improvement over its 2000 ranking, hardly a day goes by without some pay-for-favors scandal gracing the front pages.

“Koreans have very high education levels, they’re very smart, but they’re so far from being leaders in Asia,” said Woo Hae Na, a 27-year-old publicist for a foreign electronics company and a fan of the OPEN initiative. “Everything is done under the table, behind closed doors, and corruption is everywhere. Anything that changes that thinking is very welcome.”

Despite South Korea’s poor reputation, some analysts say its rating for corruption is not out of line with its stage of development--gross domestic product per capita is about $9,000 a year-and ultimately international competition and economic advances will be the biggest force for change.

Seoul has gotten a lot of attention with the program, reportedly among the first such systems set up expressly to fight corruption. Several international organizations are interested in its applications overseas. The United Nations is distributing a brochure on the program in its six official languages.

However, some developing countries note that they can’t hope to duplicate South Korea’s advanced Internet infrastructure any time soon.

“We have nowhere near the 80% Internet penetration rate that South Korea has,” said Rene Sanapo, a consultant with the Philippines’ Cebu City government, who recently visited Seoul to study the system. “We also recognize we need to streamline existing procedures in the Philippines first. You don’t want to computerize something that’s already a problem.”

Sanapo added, however, that even a few computers among the elites may be enough to keep bureaucrats’ hands relatively clean. Furthermore, OPEN could make use of other technologies--text-based messaging on cell phone, for instance, which is widespread in the Philippines.

For Bae, the trading company head, the most welcome change has been the new attitude among bureaucrats.

“In the past they’d order you, around, tell you to drop everything, come down tomorrow, do things for their convenience,” he said. “Now that they’re watched all the time, they’re actually nice. It’s quite a change.”