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Interview
night using abacuses to draw up budgets during that time. So I developed
a computer program for budget formulation with the persons
who were selected among the budget officers to receive my
lectures on COBOL and FORTRAN. In the early 1970s, the
computer program for budget formulation finally replaced abacuses,"
said Dr. Ahn.
Building of the first data communication
systems
Development of Korea's first data communication system was
also the work of Dr. Ahn. At that time, people had to print out
documents at the computer center and travel to places where people
worked to hand deliver documents. Dr. Ahn's team installed
computer terminals that could read data and print output at the
'remote' area of the budget office at the Economic Planning Board
in Gwanhwamun, connecting to the KIST mainframe computer
located in Hongneung. This was a historic event. Even President
Park attended the opening ceremony. Korea succeeded in data
networking regardless of the poor condition of the telephone line.
Many useful programs like the property tax billing system was
developed by local government officials who were selected and
trained by Dr. Ahn's KIST team. Indeed, he pioneered computerization
at local self-governing entities.
Dr. Ahn said, "To go off on a tangent, local government officials
were selected based on their IQ scores. Then, how did we select
computer persons in addition to the IQ test? It may sound
funny, but we preferentially picked those who were good at
baduk, an ancient board game for two players. This is because we
thought good baduk players were good at reading numbers and it
would contribute to their knowledge of comprehending computer
programs," he said laughing. In 1972, he was picked as a recipient
of the US State Department's East West Center scholarship. He
received a master's degree in computer science in 1974 and a doctorate
in resource economics from the University of Hawaii in
1977. His academic advisor was Professor Norman Abramson
who invented the packet radio broadcasting concept. He then returned
to Korea to spearhead the nation's push for e-government.
When he returned to Korea, administrative procedures were very
user-unfriendly: to export goods, exporters had to visit government
offices where necessary documents were kept.
Administrative costs were enormous. To ease the burden of exporters,
Dr. Ahn, with the help of the Economic Planning Board,
set up experimental computer networks in Chungcheongbuk-do
to computerize the local government's work. It was similar to the
current G4C information system we have these days. With the
project, people could technically obtain official documents in remote
areas. Dr. Ahn lamented, "Despite such efforts, there were
so many regulations and red tape that prevented a nation-wide
dispersion of the system: laws required copies of official documents
to be stamped with the seal of the head of the municipality
where the document was located. If that law had been revised at
that time, Korea' e-government system would have been put in
place much faster."
CDC3300 shown from the above picture is the same model which has been installed in KIST as korea’s first mainframe computer.
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