Negative Impact of E-Governance to NGOs:
The Case of Korean Council of YMCAs

Jai Chang Park
Professor, Sookmyung Women’s University
Korea

1. Introduction
E-governance has become a part of our daily lives. It is no longer confined to the
networks between government and citizens (B2C). It has developed into other spheresof our society. It is particularly so when we refer e-governance to any collaborations toenhance public interests by the use of information and communication
technologies(ICTs), that have the ability to transform government's relations withcitizens, business and other arms of government.
Among the collaborative partners of e-governance, NGOs have shown an exponential
growth in their numbers and magnitude in policy process in these days all across theworld. Korea is not an exception from such a trend. After the advent of "87 regime"1,
Korea has observed a rapid and flourishing development of NGOs in their number,diversity and voice to governing process. NGOs in Korea have grown up even as one of
the major political sources of hegemonic power steering policy directions andmobilizing citizens' supports.
There is, however, little research on NGOs' use of ICTs in general and impact of egovernance to NGOs in particular. We know from studies of firms that the introductionof new technologies can substantially impact on organization's internal and external
relations (Orlikowski et al, 1995). The internal structure of NGOs could reflect thecollaborative and less hierarchical organizational forms observed in firms that haveintroduced ICTs to their interactions with government (Kahn, 2000; Stark, 2000). It also
can be argued that NGOs would undergo organizational changes and allow themselves
to more flexibly address the competing demands placed upon them and better exploit
ambiguity.
This paper aims at exploring what are the real impacts of ICTs to NGOs engaged in
e-governance. There has been an assumption or normative expectation that the use of
ICTs can stimulate innovative capacity within and among NGOs. This innovative
capacity, however, could lead NGOs into new forms of hybrids that do not easily map
onto conventional images of NGOs. This brings with it the risk that NGOs willencounter problems of accountability that undermine rather than enhance their
responsiveness to social change.
1

July revolt by citizens in 1987 against then government's intention to change constitution in order toenable indirect election of the president is counted as a historical milestone in the process of
democratization of Korean politics. And the successive governance from that time on is called as 87
regimes in comparison with the previous ones.

Therefore, we need to understand the changes and possibilities that ICTs really bringto the work of NGOs and how they affect the mission of NGOs. It becomes very
important to find a way to work out how to adapt to the changes while maintaining the
integrity of furthering the NGOs' objectives. We need to address and meet the changing
expectations of the people with whom the NGOs work everyday.
2. Role of NGOs in Information Society
The advent of information society has direct bearing upon the social and institutional
environments in which NGOs operate. Being able to take advantages of ICTs in such a
circumstance, NGOs expand dramatically their web of social interaction, increase its
density, and promote new connections among diverse and dispersed social actors. They
could solicit "wider participation" of citizens by locating people with far more ease than
before who share same values and objectives with them, providing accessibility for
those who are disabled, living in remote areas, and thus discouraged to join in policy
process, and distributing information tailored for the interests of individual needs andaspirations.
Increased participation serves as a source of political legitimacy for NGOs to identify
social issues, raise dissident voices, develop alternatives and thus advocate andrepresent the interests of people. Such a role is particularly demanding since politicalagents could not aggregate, transmit, and represent the interests of principles with suchaccuracy and speed that they were expected to be due to increased turbulence of
information flow and bureaucratic structure of government. NGOs could thus beconsidered as an alternative conduit for citizens to deliver their messages to government.
They become essential to the vibrant functioning of a democracy.
NGOs also become able to compete professionality and subject matter expertise withgovernment officials since the monopoly or dominance of information by government
could not be maintained any further in information society. Demarcation line between
government and civil society becomes blurred and a tension to hold a sort ofequilibrium between them takes place. NGOs become able to functionally complement
or replace administrative agents, whose authority owes much to their professionality
and accumulation of information, relying much on "deeper participation" of citizens.
Magnitude of NGOs as a gatekeeper or a third party judge has upgraded.
NGOs in information society described in literature as like the above are not only to
set priority of policy agendas but also to evaluate and interpret policy alternatives fromobjective and scientific standpoint. Along the line of understanding NGOs as suchproponents or promoters of policy alternatives, there is an assumption to equate NGOs
with citizens as if they were same identity. It is true that NGOs are associated on thebase of voluntary participation of citizens, however, they are not citizen themselves.
Between NGOs and citizens, there are almost same working mechanisms that we see in
e-governance between government and NGOs and those between government andcitizens as well. Associations imply an existence of internal working structure
meanwhile individual citizens are isolated from each other and free from such working
mechanism.
Discussions about issues regarding impact of the advent of information society ingeneral and e-governance in particular to NGOs most start from normative premises
about technical properties of ICTs, even at the scholarly and policy level. And theynaturally arrive at emphasizing positive impact ignoring negative one. Yet whileassumptions about ICTs' social effects provide good rhetorical ammunition for debates,
they tend in most cases to outstrip our knowledge of how ICTs are actually influence(O"Mahony and Barley, 1999) the relationship between NGOs and citizens. The social
practices that evolve around the use of ICTs tell us more accurate information about
their effect than assumptions based on their properties alone (Bijker 1997; Giddens,
1984). It becomes an imperative to correct such a bias by conducting closer research on
the working mechanism between NGOs and citizens.
3. E-Governance between NGOs and Citizens
Three different categories of e-governance could be discerned from theoreticalschemes dealing with e-governance and interactive collaborations among and between
the major components of a society: e-governance between government and citizens (a),e-governance between government and NGOs (b) and e-governance between NGOs andcitizens(c). Among these e-governance models, e-governance between NGOs andcitizens(c) has seldom been discussed in literature. Without e-governance between
NGOs and citizens(c), however, e-governance between government and NGOs (b)could not function as an alternative conduit or a complementary funnel to e-governancebetween government and citizens (a). Communication and networking between NGOs
and citizens are integral to NGOs' basic tasks of aggregating citizens' aspirations andneeds, evaluating policy alternatives, transmitting them to government and coimplementing them together with government.
Such a relationship could be outlined as follow.

Three different models of e-governance
Government

(b)
(a)

NGOs

(c)
Citizens

In other words, e-governance between government and citizens (a) depends upon
what relations NGOs develop with citizens in their confrontations with newly
introduced ICTs. ICTs are designed and adopted as a tool for processing information,
increasing communication and facilitating networking. If ICTs are seen as such a tool,
then NGOs seem organizationally ideal for adapting to them.
The problem with viewing ICTs as a tool, however, is that once new technologies are
introduced to solve old problem, the problems themselves change. E-mail may enable
an NGO to increase its level of communication, but it may also create such a flood ofrequests for information that the NGO becomes paralyzed (DiMaggio et al, 2001). The
gap between institutional capacity of NGOs and exploding political participation by
citizens makes their response so slow that the citizens who clicked on NGOs' internet
may turn their way to government and communicate directly with government
overpassing e-governance system between NGOs and citizens. There is no sufficient
time to respond to rapidly erupting changes and flood of information incoming fromcitizens to NGOs. It becomes further serious when NGOs are not able to keep abreast
with changes in a society in their technological edge and furnished with insufficient
staff to work on such incoming requests.
One of the major reasons that have induced citizens to join in e-governance with
NGOs has been their trust and reliance on professional knowledge and judgment
extended by NGOs. It becomes, however, difficult for NGOs to maintain such a relative
supremacy in their support of professionality and expertise that could hold further
reliance of citizens after the advent of information society since wider spread of ICTs
enable citizens easily access to various sources of professional information andknowledge and enjoy higher quality of information by reaching directly to professionals
and experts and circumventing NGOs via ICTs. And for NGOs, there is no sufficienttime to respond to the requests from citizens as long as they maintain conventional
working mechanism. It is a routine way of providing professional expertise for NGOs toconsult with subject matter experts at their initial stage of developing policy position,
which inevitably requires some time to drag before responding to the citizens'
requests.
It is obvious that ICTs accelerate communication, promote networking, and upgradecollaboration among NGOs. Widening gap between NGOs with advanced ICTs andthose with outmoded computers and still depend largely on regular mail and faxes,
however, makes collaboration far more difficult and uneasy to establish coalition front
among NGOs. The main barriers causing such a different institutional adaptability to
information society have been relative lack of funding, relevant training, andaccessibility to ICTs. The fast pace of change in ICTs has contributed also to suchdisparity among NGOs.
In other words, role of NGOs as an intermediate between government and citizens
rapidly decreases and thus functional locus of NGOs is challenged seriously. Such achange implies a working mechanism that may take place in the process ofgovernment's shrinking into civil society, which have been projected by some futurists
in their discussion of changing relations between government and civil society. Even
though it has been argued that technical properties of ICTs will eventually bring in autoadministration, there has been a paucity of information about how such a change would
be realized. Knowledge about how e-governance between NGOs and citizens graduallydegraded and e-governance between government and citizens eventually replaces egovernance between government and NGOs will furnish further understanding on thisprocess of change.
4. Impact of ICTs to Korean Council of YMCAs
Korea is well known with its vibrant NGOs activities among other Asian and Pacificcountries. Such a dynamic growth and operation of Korean NGOs owes much to their
historical evolution led mainly by civil society organizations(CSOs)' leadership andstanding staffers, most of whom once have engaged in student movements against
dictatorial regimes in the past. Among such CSOs, there are four major ones, which
exercise leadership in setting agendas, advocating against government, formulating
public opinion, and thus directing CSOs movements in Korea: People's Solidarity for
Participatory Democracy (PSPD), Korean Federation for Environmental Movement

(KFEM), Korean Council of YMCAs (YMCA) and Citizens' Coalition for Economic
Justice (CCEJ).
Among these "big fours, YMCA enjoys longest institutional history, largest volumeof standing staffers, membership, and annual budget, and greatest number of local
movements. In other words, YMCA is the most established and so bureaucratized one
among them. It does not necessarily mean, however, that it has kept technological edgein the adoption and use of ICTs. It is true, however, after the upgrade of internet
facilities, YMCA has become more responsive to social issues than before. In theprevious days, local movements have enjoyed almost complete autonomy in theirinitiation and responses to social issues, and thus there seldom has occurred unified
confrontation against social problems and difficulties at national level. ICTs haveopened up further networking and wider communications. Instead of a one to one
relationship among the movements, individual local chapters began to form networks ofcommon interest using email, listserves and chat rooms among themselves. This does
not replace meeting face to face, nor does it disintermediate YMCA from its
relationship between government and citizens. In fact it has enhanced the work of
YMCA. It has become more competent at putting people in contact with each other,
facilitating, listening to discussions, summarizing, placing the personal issues in apolitical and historical context, monitoring and lobbying for change. This is done now
online.
But it also threatens to disintermediate the existing lively and timely responses of
YMCA to recurring requests of citizens. Conventional way of encountering andresponding to social issues at its initial stage in YMCA has been to put an issue on an
open and public debate inviting professionals and subject matter experts in a perusal tocall attentions from the public and to take account of the professional knowledge andexpertise into its work of analyzing impact of social difficulties, evaluating current
policies and developing alternatives. It, thereby, could have been able to enjoy a role ofleadership in the fields of developing issues, building public opinion, and guiding
Korean NGOs front. Citizens' Forum (simin nondan) marked its 400th meeting
anniversary last October, which meets regularly at least once or twice a month for thelast 20 years to enrich and promote such discussions and exchange of opinions amongprofessional experts and other related parties. This meeting, however, is rapidly
declining nowadays in its magnitude in mobilizing public attention, drawing larger
attendance of audiences, and soliciting standing staffers to rely more heavily in their
daily works of advocacy building, which contrasts to the glory of heydays in 1970s and1980s.

One of the major reasons of such decline owes much to the wide spread of ICTs in
Korea. Meanwhile those who are equipped with ICTs could access directly to
professional expertise, research relevant knowledge with much more ease and speed,
and develop their own forum to formulate opinions and alternative solutions to social
issues, YMCA should go through such conventional procedures to attract expertise andbear on internal bureaucracy less flexible to respond to such rapidly popping issues.
KTX café’s are excellent examples.
With the historical opening of the express rail (KTX) in April 2004, Korea has
joined the league of France, Japan, Germany and Spain and entered into the super highspeed train era, operating at speeds of 300km per hour. Opening of the express rail,
which has been referred to as the biggest national policy project since the nationalfoundation, will not only bring about enormous changes to the lives of Koreans byenabling them to reach anywhere in the country within three hours, but it will also havea huge influence on the economic, social and cultural aspects of the country. However,it turned out to be not very much fast, safe, convenient and environmentally friendly,
which is almost completely different from what has been insisted by the government.
Citizens disappointed with such a poor service began to criticize the government andlook for solutions not by reaching to major NGOs this time which have exercised astrong leadership in mobilizing political pressure upon government but by forming antiKTX café’s in cyber space by themselves. In fact major NGOs in general and YMCA in
particular had intentions to deal the issue with higher priority but the citizens were notable to wait until these bureaucratized organizations began to respond since they were
evaluated to move rather slowly than they were expected to be.
Similar cases are observed more frequently nowadays. The long-term stabilization of
the National Pension Fund became the overriding concern since the introduction of the
National Pension Scheme in 1988 which was initially designed to provide high benefits
against low contributions. Accordingly, the centerpiece of the full-scale reform, which
was made to extend its mandatory coverage to people in urban area (in April 1999), wasa set of measures taken to stabilize the fund. In an effort to stabilize the fund, financial
recalculation is advised to be made every 5 years from 2003 to adjust contribution andbenefit level appropriately and maintain the long-term balance of Pension Fund. In theprocess of reforming the pension system, the transparency, specification andprofitability of Pension Fund management have been questioned and become a focus ofstrong social concern. YMCA was concerned about the problems encountered by therecipients of the Pension and tried to launch a reform campaign. Its civil society
movement committee was called upon to review the issue. Citizens, however, didn't

wait until YMCA takes an initiation and develops a campaign program. There popped
up many anti-Pension café’s by themselves in the internet almost instantaneously andrun reform campaigns without waiting assistance from major NGOs. Such internet
café’s requested viewers and participants of chat rooms to join in e-protest against
Pension authority and to drive sit-in demonstration in front of the building. If it were in
the past, citizens must have tried to reach and rely on major NGOs leadership including
YMCA.
Such a change implies that YMCA is now placed in tighter competition with otherNGOs and citizens' self help than before. In case of YMCA, it has not been able toinvest enough financial resources to develop ICTs and train standing staffers to adapt tosuch changes. When the whole Korean society has become mainstreamed into ICTs
application and civic participation, YMCA as like the other NGOs in Korea has barely
traced after such change and hadn’t have enough resources to invest for the increase of
its staffers' capacity in the effective use of ICTs. Let alone to build the capacity of theirvolunteers and those with whom they work. Such a reluctance to develop institutional
capacity has drawn direct e-democracy. And it should be reminded that such a direct edemocracy where one by one, each individual reacts to an entire arm of government
bypassing YMCA's mediation, threatens to ignore the experience, knowledge,
institutional memory, grassroots connection, and expertise of YMCA in particular andKorean CSOs in general.
5. Conclusion
Therefore, it is an imperative for the major Korean CSOs in general and YMCA in
particular to increase their capacity to work online more effectively in many ways. Suchas by being able to select the most efficient method according to the needs and requestsof participants, the communication processes and the content. They need to up gradeinternal and networked work and communication processes which can be used torespond to the online consultations. They need effective online report back mechanisms
for internal review of both process and content. They should keep abreast technologicaledge with other components of the society and reform internal working mechanism byreflecting requests for division of labor and rather flat organizational structure andthereby overcoming bureaucratic nature of conventional working system.
It has been argued that the ICTs build social capital by enhancing the effectiveness ofcommunity-level voluntary associations and by establishing powerful organizations
watching on the works of government (DiMaggio et al, 2001:319). Such a prevailingoptimism over the role of ICTs owes much, however, to the unilateral perspective
reviewing the phenomenon from vantage point of NGOs rather than from that ofcitizens. When we approach to it from the side of citizens, it becomes very natural toarrive at a self reflection that we need to widen our perspective and to correct our
projection over the impact of ICTs to e-governance to such a more balanced view that
there is an inclination not to allow room for NGOs to intermediate communications
between government and citizens any further and citizens' direct communication
capability to government increases far beyond our expectations. We should overcome
research bias or disproportionate emphasis on NGOs implicitly treating the nature of
ICTs as fixed.
And it should be concerned also that when citizens' direct communication withgovernment circumventing NGOs becomes a rather recurrent and common phenomenon,
there could take place a danger of populism dominating government policy formulation
process. The normative role of NGOs in policy process is not simply to provide andtransmit citizens' opinion without filtering it but to furnish professional expertise andjudgment together with information about citizens' preferences and, thereby, to satisfy
both premises of value and fact in decision making process. It should be reminded thatfor a rational decision making it requires not only to prioritize citizens' preferences but
also to make professional evaluation on the base of scientific and objective rationality.
The knowledge about shrinking mechanism of NGOs' role as an intermediate
between government and citizens implies a lot and could provide a base to enhance
understanding about final stage of government disappearance argued by Marx andemergence of self autonomous government projected by Kooiman (2003). Those
arguments were in the lack of presenting intervening variables which connect cause andeffect in the process of developing their theoretical schemes. The result of this research
could be a ground stone to correct such paucity in theoretical constructs of theseassertions.
But such a role shrinking of NGOs as an intermediate between government andcitizens, however, does not necessarily mean that citizens will completely stop tointeract with NGOs. On the contrary, they still continue to communicate and interact
with NGOs and such a relationship will continue to exist. NGOs will never lose their
institutional trust and legitimacy as an intermediate between government and citizens
since NGOs play a role as a gatekeeper evaluating and filtering citizens' opinion andinitiating identification of social issues without waiting input by citizens.

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