University of Pittsburgh

South Korea

My dissertation is titled, Leveraging Partnership Networks for IT innovation: How to build effective Neighborhood Information Systems (NISs), which is supported by an NSF 05-574 Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, 2006-2007. In this dissertation research, I am looking at how an IT innovation tool helps local governance, which can be considered an e-governance study. I am in my last year of writing dissertation for my doctoral degree.

In short, my research interests are: first, to study public private nonprofit partnership in IT projects; and second, to investigate how sharing of information through new ICT tools help governance, whether it is between public and nonprofit, or business, or citizens.

U.S. and Korea

My related work experiences include working as an intern for Cyberparty, one of the first online democracy projects by National Strategy Institute in Seoul, Korea. I briefly worked in e-business industry in Korea as well. I have worked as a project team member of Pittsburgh Neighborhood and Community Information System, which is an IT innovation tool to help community development stakeholders.

Currently, I am also a team member of an International Digital Government Research Working Group, Online Consultation and Public Policy Making, Chair, Peter Shane, which is supported by the Center for Technology in Government and NSF.

I am mostly interested in looking at how to increase information sharing through new ICT tools to help governments to be more responsive and effective. Another case study that I plan on doing for the International Working Group is to examine Korea Customs Service’s client logistic information system as an e-governance example, with Dae-Ho Kwon, assistant director at Trade Cooperation Division at Korea Customs Service. This will be a case study highlighting an IT tool helping the governance of Korean Customs Service and business organizations that are dependent on the logistics information of exporting and importing goods.

I am also working with Professor Suk Jin Lew at Sogang University in Seoul, Korea for a research, tentatively titled Connecting via Internet: How do the citizens and Assembly (Congress) members interact with each others through Internet? He is the leading scholar in e-Democracy study in Korea and a chair of the Information Communication Technology and Politics working group.