Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

2009 Category 1: republic of Korea
Asia and the Pacific
Republic of Korea
2009 Category 1 Winner
On and Off-Line Real-Time Water Quality Opening
Services, Office of Waterworks, Seoul Metropolitan Government
Recipients on behalf of the institution
Mr. Oh Se Hoon, Mayor of Seoul
Mr. Lee Jeong Kwan, Assistant Mayor for Waterworks
Summary
Through this initiative, the Seoul Metropolitan Government of the Republic of Korea
has enabled citizens to access an accurate and up-to-date information about the quality
of water being supplied to their house by establishing an online water assessment
system. This has resulted in increased citizens’ trust in public water supply and has
contributed to an increase in tap water consumption of 20%, as well as in greater
conservation of ground water.
The Problem
Seoul’s tap water, ’Arisu’ satisfied all 145 items of water quality inspection recommended
by the World Health Organization (WH). However, Seoul’s citizens were
suspicious of the quality of Arisu for no apparent reason and avoided drinking it.
There was no monitoring system to assess the quality of tap water, which brought a
low rate of consumption of tap water, high sales volume of bottled water, reckless
underground water development and indiscreet belief in water purifiers. Moreover,
negative effects of over-usage and mismanagement of purifiers, as apparent in waste
of water resources and pollution of drinking water became common. All of this resulted
in a threat to citizens’ health and cast doubts on the overall quality of public
services, particularly on the tap water supplying service.
The Solution
With the Arisu Quality Verification System, citizens can check on-line and in realtime
the quality of water supplied to their houses from water purification plants. They
can also gather such information from water quality inspecting agents who visit citizens’
houses for free. In 2008, the Seoul Government provided information through
the internet about the water quality, turbidity, pH, chlorine residual, of a total of 72
spots, including six intake plants, six water purification plants, and 60 spots of water
routes supplied to citizens.
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