Struggle between IT-related Departments Results in Investment Overlap of 12.5 Billion Won

The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) revealed that struggle between IT-related government departments led to an overlap of investment worth 12.5 billion won in the government’s IT projects, including the terrestrial Digital Media Broadcasting (DMB) and the development of online game engine technology.

Furthermore, the BAI found out that the departments’ careless R&D investments have caused serious budget waste by designating even patented technologies as national R&D projects.

On June 25, the BAI reported the result of its special audit on IT and high-tech related government projects and asked for punishment of nine heads of related bureaus, team chiefs, and officers at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, the Ministry of Information and Communication, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

This is the first time the BAI requested for the punishment of public officials based on the government departments’ mismanagement of R&D investments.

“Budget worth 8.3 billion won could have been wasted because the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy and the Ministry of Information and Communication both gave orders when pursuing DMB technology development project in March 2003,” said Chung Chang-young, manager of Team 1 of the National Strategic Programs Evaluation Group in BAI at the briefing, and added, “The BAI asked for readjustment of roles between the two departments.”

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Information and Communication both sought for online game engine development project, resulting in overlap of investment worth 5.4 billion won at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The BAI ordered the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to earmark only 1.2 billion won for investment and to spend the rest 4.2 billion won on other projects such as developing technology to support creation of game contents. The BAI also uncovered that the IT-related departments made overlapped investments in numerous mid-to-long term R&D plans, which were supposed to be pursued at the government level, because they arbitrarily made investments without referring the plans to the National Science and Technology Council for screening.

For instance, the Ministry of Information and Communication and the Ministry of Health and Welfare both made investments on “Five Year Plan for ICT Development” and “Bio and Health Industry Promotion Plan” in October 1999 and April 2001 respectively without even reviewing the possibility of investment overlap.

The BAI also pointed out that among 38 projects of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Energy on common core technology development, 18 projects, or 47 percent, were similar to the technologies already patented before the ministry pursued the projects.

Young-Hae Choi yhchoi65@donga.com