The Seoul government announced Monday that it plans to develop an open cloud platform to better connect systems across its e-government.

The Ministry of Security and Public Administration and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said they would join forces in developing the platform by 2016, using the e-government standard framework.

One advantage of moving to an external cloud platform is that anyone can use or improve the open software, the ministries said.

The project will be directed under the leadership of the National Information Society Agency in cooperation with small and medium enterprises specializing in cloud services.

The unified infrastructure of e-government’s standard framework is expected to allow developers to save money and time, using common components, such as log-in functions, across multiple projects.

The standard framework also frees them from being tied to one specific company over exclusivity of technology.

South Korea’s e-government solutions are drawing keen interest from other countries because of its cutting-edge technologies. The country has been pushing to export e-government solutions since 2009.

By Suh Ye-seul (sys@heraldcorp.com)