Keywords: Community networks, INVIL, South Korea.

Abstract: In this paper, we will discuss (1) past, present, and future of the community network in the United States

with an analytic framework of the community network lifecycle (2) planning and implementation of the

INVIL project, a South Korean version of the community network; (3) similarities and dissimilarities

between those two for comparison in terms of expected benefits, and (4) recommendations based on our

analysis. Contributions of this paper are two folds: helping the South Korean government to improve the

INVIL project and other governments to learn lessons on similar projects as part of their e-government

programs.

1 INTRODUCTION

South Korea ranked first in the world in terms of

broadband penetration with 21.3 subscriptions per

100 inhabitants (ITU, p.5). Thanks to the well-

developed IT infrastructure, three quarters of South

Korean households had access to the high-speed

Internet services. However, the high-speed Internet

network is concentrated in urban areas rather than

agricultural/fishing villages in remote regions. These

areas isolated from the benefits of the Internet and e-

government services are not able to access the

advanced network, but also have limited opportunity

to have IT training. For this reason, the South

Korean government has been implementing the

Information Network Village (INVIL) project as

part of its e-government program to bridge digital

divide between regions and social classes. The main

effort of the INVIL project is to lay the foundation

for the information have-nots to have the equal

access to government services as the information

haves via e-Government.

2 COMMUNITY NETWORKS

As the Internet has become a more important

element of everyday life, a number of communities

have sought to go further, not only providing free

access but also improving the network infrastructure

within the community. The goals of such wired

communities are to bring Internet access into the

homes of all community residents, to provide

various information and services through Internet,

and to facilitate training/education in information

technology and in some cases, the growth of

computer-related industries within the community.

2.1 Cleveland Free-Net

With one phone line in 1984, the School of

Medicine at Case Western Reserve University

developed an online bulletin board where patients

could contact doctors and get answers to medical

questions (Cleveland Free-net). Since the

experiment proved successful, it was expanded to

serve the whole Cleveland area as a community

information resource not only on medicine but also

on law, education, arts, and government. In 1986 it

was named the Cleveland Free-Net (CFN) to provide

free e-mail accounts, access to community

information, and access to the Internet through

dialup modems. Subsequently, it had been stabilized

successfully as witnessed in its steady growth to

have over 36,000 active accounts in 1992. However,

it faced a challenge of sustainability when new

development in ICT made its system and services

COMPARISON BETWEEN COMMUNITY NETWORKS

IN U.S.A. AND IN SOUTH KOREA

J. H. Im

Department of Management, Sacred Heart University, 5151 Park Ave. airfield, CT 06825, USA

Jin-Wan Seo

Department of Public Administration, University of Incheon, Nam-Ku, DoHwa-Dong 177, Incheon, South Korea

228

H. Im J. and Seo J. (2007).

COMPARISON BETWEEN COMMUNITY NETWORKS IN U.S.A. AND IN SOUTH KOREA.

In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Society, e-Business and e-Government /

e-Learning, pages 228-232

DOI: 10.5220/0001273902280232

 SciTePress

obsolete and outdated. Coping with changes in the

ICT infrastructure, it failed to transform into a

sustainable business model by neither securing

reliable funding sources for free services nor turning

into a profit-generating model. Lack of funding to

upgrade and operate CFN eventually resulted in

closure in 1999. CFN is considered the pioneer of

Free-nets and community networks. 170 sites in the

United States, 64 in Canada, 9 in the United

Kingdom are listed at the Web site of

http://www.lights.com/freenet.

2.2 Public Electronic Network

The Public Electronic Network (PEN) was begun by

the city of Santa Monica, California in February

1989. One distinctive difference between CFN and

PEN is that the former was initiated by a local

university, but the latter by a municipal government.

PEN’s original purpose was to link residents to the

city hall so that they could have access to public

information like city schedule and events. Soon, it

was evolved into one of the first community

networks with online discussion forums where

residents exchanged their opinions on social and

political issues, thus increasing their awareness of

and participation in local government affairs

(Dutton, 1996). It has further transformed into a full-

fledged e-government portal for the city by

providing a broad range of civil services including

online transactions such as payment of parking

tickets and application for business licenses (Doctor

& Dutton, 1998).

2.3 Blacksburg Electronic Village

In view of the Internet's potential to increase civic

participation and improve the local economy,

Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) was

established in October 1993 with the involvement of

all the major institutions in the community: Virginia

Polytechnic Institute and State University, a local

telephone company, and the municipal government.

BEV was institutionalized as a community network

where all activities in a normal community – from

politics to business and social organizing – could be

conducted online (Cohil & Kavanaugh, 1997). Now

it has transformed to a community portal for

residents and visitors and a local ISP by providing

fee-based Internet services for email accounts, civic

and personal web site hosting, website development

and support, etc.

2.4 Seattle Community Network

The Seattle Community Network (SCN) was

founded in May 1994 by volunteers as a free public-

access computer network for information access and

exchange among residents in Seattle. For community

building and empowerment, it provides free services

for email accounts and website hosting for personal

and non-profit organizations (Schuler, 1996).. Its

community pages list websites of local non-profit

organizations by topic. Since it has been strictly

financed with donations and staffed by volunteers,

its services are relatively limited in comparison with

BEV.

3 INVIL PROJECT IN SOUTH

KOREA

3.1 Planning

South Korea’s INVIL system is a government-

sponsored community network system which

consists of many locally-based community

networks. The South Korean government initiated

the INVIL system with three major objectives:

reducing digital divide, empowering village

residents, and boosting regional economy. Digital

divide, discrepancy between the information haves

and the have-nots, may occur by gender, race, age,

generation, geographic location, education level,

income level, and occupation. Agricultural and

fishing villages are typically located in distant areas

where Internet infrastructure is relatively

underdeveloped than urban areas. As part of the e-

government program by the South Korean

government, the INVIL system is to address regional

digital divide (Im & Seo, 2005) (Shin, 2006).

3.2 Implementation

The INVIL project has started from 2001. Since the

launch in 2001, the INVIL project has produced 25

networked villages in the 1

phases (2001. 3 ~ 2002.

5), 78 in the 2

phase (2002. 6 ~ 2003. 6), 88 in the

phase (2004. 1 ~ 2004. 10), and 89 in the 4

phase (2005.6 – 2006. 2). As such, currently there

are 191 INVILs nationwide. The budget spent on

this project was about 67.5 billion won. The first

phase was comprised of 19 villages aided by the

central government and 6 villages aided by local

governments. The third, in line with the ‘Balanced

Development’ policy of the Noh Moo-Hyun

government, further developed the model cases of

the second phase on a mid- and long-term basis and

promoted more diversified programs within the

project. The third phase comprises 4 villages of an

urban model and 80 villages of an agricultural and

fishery model. The agricultural and fishery model

can be divided into 34 villages using the small-scale

COMPARISON BETWEEN COMMUNITY NETWORKS IN U.S.A. AND IN SOUTH KOREA

229

model and 46 villages using the mid- to large-scale

model.

From the initial stage of INVIL project, the project

has been approached strategically. First,

‘Information Network Village Planning Group’ was

formulated consisting of related central

government’s ministries and organizations such as

the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the

Ministry of Information and Communication, the

Ministry of Education and Human Resources

Development, the Agricultural Cooperatives, and the

Fisheries Cooperatives to make sure of close

cooperation among relevant organizations. Second,

the central government organizations and local

governments (Province/County, and City/District)

divided their roles. The central government drew the

blueprint for the project, secured budget and support,

prepared the legal, policy foundation and established

a collaboration system for related organizations. And

local authorities worked on building information

contents, pursuing the information utilization

environment project by village and providing

resident training/education. Third, from the very

beginning of the project, local residents' active

engagement was emphasized. ‘INVIL Operation

Committee’ was formulated for each village with 15

or so resident representatives. The committee

determined critical issues regarding the information

village operation.

The creation of profit model was also encouraged, so

that the committee is able to stand on its own foot as

a self-sustainable body even after the government

support for the project is over. And fourth, pilot

INVIL sites were selected to evenly represent urban

areas, agricultural/fishing villages and mountainous

villages. In consideration of unique local

characteristics, INVIL models were carefully

designed in line with local needs and spread

nationwide after evaluation. As a result, each

information network village has had high-speed

Internet network infrastructure and a village

information center to have access to information and

have chance to IT training/education for local

residents. Three-tiered approach to the INVIL

project is summarized in table 1.

4 COMPARISON & SUMMARY

Venkatesh (2003) proposed a lifecycle framework

for research and action with three stages of origin,

stabilization, and transformation. A community

network comes to existence to meet certain

networking and information needs of a local

community. Once up and running, a community

network has a tendency to “become

institutionalized-stabilized, with formally defined

functions, and governance structures-and resistant to

change more readily than do applications”

(Venkatesh, 2003, p.343). It is necessary for a

community network to be transformed properly by

adapting to changes either in community’s needs or

in its ICT infrastructure. Otherwise, a community

network may lose its vitality and die out eventually.

The lifecycle framework is applied to four major

community networks in the United States and to the

INVIL project in South Korea to see how they were

originated, stabilized, and transformed for

comparison purpose. Life cycles of INVIL and the

four community networks are summarized in Table

Both the community networks in U.S.A. and the

INVIL project in Korea were initiated primarily to

reduce digital divide. However they have more

dissimilarities than similarities. First, community

network was planned as a bottom-up approach by

volunteer-based non-government organizations

(NGO) while INVIL was as a top-down approach by

the South Korean government. The central

government is in charge of planning and provision

of infrastructure of an INVIL while the INVIL’s

central council and a village operation committee

take care of contents and daily operations and

Table 1: Three-Tiered Approach to the INVIL Project.

Central & Local Governments Central Council Village Operation Committee

Planning -Setting goals

-Selection of candidate villages

-Funding for infrastructure

Implementation

-Development of infrastructure

-Setting up village info centers

-Provision of PCs and software

-Design of Web templates

-Development of contents

-User education management

Operation

- Education

- Server operation and management

-Central contents

-E-commerce transaction

processing

-Local operation

-Village contents

-Village e-commerce products

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maintenance. Thus, the central planning and

implementation provides advantages such as

reliable funding, consistency, and economy of

scale that are not possible for those volunteer-

based, independent community networks. Second,

community networks focus on underprivileged

residents in urban areas while INVIL on those in

rural areas. Third, a community network is

independent and autonomous though it may join a

free network association for information sharing

and cooperation. In contrast, an INVIL is not

independent but part of the INVIL Federation

under the auspices of the South Korean

government. Comparison between INVIL and

community networks are summarized in Table 3.

Both community networks and INVIL has the

same challenge: how to develop a self-sustainable

business model as an on-going concern. Securing

reliable and consistent funding is the main

challenge of community networks in view of its

premise of providing free services as witnessed in

those four networks discussed earlier. Though the

INVIL project has been funded by the South

Korean government, the operation of each INVIL

is delegated, thus should be self-sustainable at a

certain point by generating its own revenue.

Otherwise, an INVIL will be vulnerable to any

change in the government funding. Also, the South

Korean government should consider an assessment

system to evaluate regularly an existing INVIL as

a self-sustainable business model. Otherwise,

government funds may be wasted for some INVILs

that may not be justifiable.

Table 2: Life Cycle of INVIL and Community Networks.

INVIL CFN PEN BEV SCN

Start year 2001 1986 1989 1993 1994

Initiator Government University Volunteers University Volunteers

Community Rural Urban Urban Urban Urban

Life Cycle

1. Origin

Community

ISP

Free net Free net Free net Free net

2. Stabilization Community

portal

Community

ISP

Community

forum

Community

ISP

Community

ISP

3. Transformation Community

portal &

e-Commerce

(Phased out in

1994)

e-Government Community

ISP & portal

Community

ISP

Table 3: Comparison between INVIL and Community Networks.

INVIL Community Networks

Initiator Government NGO

Planning Top-down Bottom-up

Focus Rural community Urban community

Organization Federal Independent

Operation Hybrid Community

Pros -Central planning

-Nation-wide network

-Government funding

-Economy of scale

-Volunteer-based

-Local ownership

-Autonomous

Cons -Government-regulated

-Dependency

-Lack of funding

-Regional

-No central planning

Challenges -Sustainable business model - Sustainable business model

COMPARISON BETWEEN COMMUNITY NETWORKS IN U.S.A. AND IN SOUTH KOREA

231

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