On Tuesday, November 15th, a 7-person delegation from China || chr(39) || || chr(39) || s Advisory Committee for State Informatization (ACSI) visited NIA and had a meeting with NIA staff and headed by NIA Vice President, Jung-Hyup Kang.



The Advisory Committee for State Informatization(ACSI), was established with the approval of the State Informatization Leading Group (SILG), and is a think-tank of SILG.The State Informatization Leading Group(SILG) was formed according to a decision first made in August 2001 by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China(CPC) and the State Council with a view to providing stronger leadership to the promotionof informatization and to the safeguarding of state information security.Heading the SILG

is Wen Jiabao, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Premier of the State Council.



ACSI currently consists of 65 experts that havebeen appointed to the committee and come from all disciplines including economy, technology and law. Among them are senior academicians who have long been in the area of information technology and noted economists as well as quite a number of up-and-comers.



The ACSI-Chinese delegation was headed by Fang XinXin, Deputy Secretary Director of the ACSI, under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People || chr(39) || || chr(39) || s Republic of China. During the discussions with NIA Vice President Kang, Global Planning & Consulting Department Director,

Jeongwon Yoon and other NIA staff members, the Chinese delegation showed great interest in policy formulation regarding informatization laws and policies and the process in which they were enacted through various committees and government organizations. In China, policies and laws are drawn up

but the challenge is giving them the necessary support from the government so as to provide a mandate to make significant change and strides. Other subjects broached by ACSI officials were in the area of network infrastructure and funding mechanisms used to support the necessary broadband infrastructure in Korea. NIA Vice President Kang talked about the informatization promotion fund, privatization of the dominant telecommunication carrier (Korea Telecom) and the settlement after investment mechanism used when building out the broadband infrastructure. Dr. Kang also outlined the reasoning for setting up the government data center - National Computing & Information Agency

(NCIA) in both Daejeon and Gwangju as ACSI wanted to learn more about the reason why it was set up in such a manner and what were the positive results of setting it up in such a way. Finally, some Q&A discussion focused on various u-city projects that are currently being developed in Korea as China is in the process of developing similar u-city projects there so they wanted to learn about some of the challenges and hurdles that need to overcome in order to implement and develop such u-city projects.



The 2 hour meeting was capped with a lunch for all participants where further possible collaboration was discussed and possible future visits to Korea and China to better understand each country || chr(39) || || chr(39) || s informatization sector were also broached.