Ministries Line Up To Run IT Funding

Government ministries are beginning to negotiate on a division of the bureaucratically lucrative information technology development business. The move comes after criticism that large amounts of money are being wasted in overlapping investments and programs.

The Finance Ministry said Friday that it has sent to other ministries its suggestions for a division of the IT promotion pie and asked those ministries － commerce, industry and energy; information and communication and culture and tourism － for their ideas.

A finance ministry official said he hopes final decisions can be made at a vice ministerial meeting to be held next week.

According to the finance ministry's provisional plans, the culture ministry will take charge of promoting the e-book content and online animation industries, while the work force in those industries will be offered training programs run by the Ministry of Information and Communications. This division would require the culture ministry to abandon its technology development projects and the information ministry to stop sponsoring e-book and animation exhibitions and contests.

The commerce ministry would have overall supervision of e-commerce, while the information ministry will continue to work on e-commerce infrastructure projects.

Computer game content development would be led by the culture ministry, but the commerce ministry would push the government plans to establish animation indus

by Song Sang-hoon