The role of local council for the effective regional informatization: The Seoul metropolitan government case

Information society has come to people with dual faces: messiah and monster. While information and telecommunication technology has remarkably contributed to set free from human drudgery, it also makes people frustrated in many cases. Regional informatization is an attempt to reduce the interregional information gap. The information policy in a local level should be based on the citizens’ interests. Nevertheless, either central or local bureaucracy has exclusively driven the information policy in Korea. Therefore, one can easily turn to the role of local council that has the mission to articulate the various voices of its constituents. In order to clearly identify the focal issues, this paper focuses on the problem of information asymmetry between bureaucrats and politicians, on the basis of the principal-agent theory. After analyzing the case of the Seoul Metropolitan Government (as an agent) and the Seoul Metropolitan Council (as a principal), this study suggests that the local council should play a key role as messenger, watchdog, advocate, and pioneer. Lastly, it also proposes that the Seoul Metropolitan Council should form an Information and Telecommunication Committee as a Standing Committee so that it can effectively manage and monitor the regional informatization.