On 29 December 2014 (Tuesday), the in-house seminar on e-government for disaster risk management was held in the office of UNPOG. This seminar was organized as the prior consultation meeting before the UNPOG’s joint training workshop with United Nations Office for Sustainable Development (UNOSD) in March 2015 in Songdo, Republic of Korea, with the title of “Sustainable Development and Disaster Risk Management Using E-Government”.

 

Ms. Jeong-hee Huh (Manager, Information and Statistics Division, Ministry of Public Safety and Security, Republic of Korea) and Mr. Yong-gab Kim (Deputy Manager, Information and Statistics Division, Ministry of Public Safety and Security, Republic of Korea) were invited as speakers and provided about an hour-long presentation on Korea’s experiences of ICT-enabled disaster risk management. After the presentation, there was in-depth discussion on how to promote e-government in developing disaster risk management system. In particular, Mr. Lim (Head of UNPOG) emphasized that it is critical for government systems to catch up with cutting-edge technologies for more efficient public service delivery. Furthermore he stressed that rapid dissemination system is essential to respond effectively to disaster and in this respect the centralized disaster management system could be more efficient than independent systems of each municipality.

 

The seminar gave staff of UNPOG a good opportunity to enhance understanding on e-government for disaster risk management. The lessons learnt will be used as important resources for the upcoming joint training workshop in March 2015.