Was the Seoul OPEN System Really Effective in Preventing Corruption?
This paper explores the effectiveness of the Seoul OPEN system, a leading E-Government application, on preventing administrative corruption. The ordinal response regression model (ORM) was conducted on survey data collected from civil servants who were handling civil applications on the system. The system allows citizens and civil servants to monitor application handling processes in real-time mode. Although increased fatigue incurs serious complaints about inefficiency, civil servants worry about the fact that anyone is able to look what they do, and that delinquency is monitored and punished directly by the Auditing Bureau. They realized that any attempt of old style delinquency and malfeasance are more likely detected under the system. ORM shows civil servants civil servants’ incentive structures that were remarkably changed by the OPEN system. To sum, the OPEN system, through changing the incentive structures, contributes to remarkably improving administrative transparency and thus
