Page 53 - Enhancing innovation and participation in smart sustainable cities

United for Smart Sustainable Cities
Enhancing Innovation and Participation

3 Conclusions

Through the Seoul Open Data Plaza, SMG has learned that public data generates more value when it is open and
shared with the public. It was noted that sustaining such a portal required strong leadership, sound policy
frameworks, and active engagement with citizens. Additionally, it was realized that it is not the amount of data
but the quality of data that matters to citizens.
Some of the critical factors that contributed to the success of the Seoul Open Data Plaza are as follows:
ƒ the consistent policy direction of the national government, SMG, and the district governments;
ƒ the SMG-enacted ordinances and the creation of a division to implement the project;

ƒ the development and promotion of the Seoul Open Data Plaza as an integrated open data system; to
increase user efficiency, transparency and accountability of SMG;
ƒ the disclosure and promotion of useful data which are closely related to improving the quality of citizens’
lives.
In order to further improve the Seoul Open Data Plaza and promote inclusion, SMG will organize a Citizen Action
Team that will be involved in the planning and evaluation of the Seoul Open Data Plaza. Together with the Citizen
Action Team, which consists of civil society and data experts, SMG will change the way Seoul Open Data Plaza is
operated and will make it more citizen-centric. In 2017, SMG plans to convert the commercial software-based
platform into an open-source system to reduce the cost of maintenance and promote open-source culture. It will
also facilitate active communication with developers through GitHub, an open source community, to help them
create solutions for urban problems by using public data. Moving forward, the portal will also begin to include
geospatial data and will integrate statistics into the system, which will help people utilize the system in various
capacities.

A References

Seoul Open Data Plaza
http://data.seoul.go.kr
Korea Public Data Portal
http://data.go.kr
Seoul Digital 2020 (Digital Masterplan)
http://digital.seoul.go.kr/eng
Seoul Big Data Campus
https://bigdata.seoul.go.kr/

U4SSC series 51