The government has come up with an action plan to bring to fruition President Park Geun-hye’s vision for “Government 3.0”.

During the election campaign, Park promised to introduce a smart, next-generation e-government capable of providing individual citizens with services tailored to their demands.

Government 3.0 is an upgrade from version 2.0, which is characterized by bilateral interaction between citizens and government, and version 1.0, which is based on the one-way delivery of services to citizens.

Korea is widely recognized as a global leader in e-government. Last year, it ranked at the top for the second time in a row of the e-government index drawn up by the United Nations Public Administration Network.

Yet it pales next to countries such as the United States in terms of the volume of government data made available to the public. So the vision calls for, among other things, opening up the government.

The Ministry of Security and Public Administration said that from next year, the government would make public 100 million pieces of information a year, a massive increase from the 310,000 items disclosed last year.

Data will be made public even when there are no requests for disclosure from citizens.

The bold scheme is welcome as it will offer huge benefits to the nation. For starters, it will help make the government more transparent. The availability of information on projects promoted by the central and local governments will make it easy for citizens to track how taxpayers’ money is spent. This will exert pressure on government officials to minimize budget waste.

Information sharing will also boost job creation and spur economic growth. Government-held data in such fields as weather, transportation and health care has considerable commercial value.

The National Information Society Agency projected that making government data available to the public would add 150,000 new jobs to the economy and generate economic effects amounting to 24 trillion won.

The Small and Medium Business Administration said it would help entrepreneurs start up a new business taking advantage of the newly disclosed government data.

Government 3.0 is also about connecting with citizens and encouraging them to participate in public affairs. For this, the government plans to launch by August a platform for citizen participation, which will allow anyone to suggest a policy idea and discuss it with government officials or experts from the private sector.

The government also plans to consult with citizens, using online voting, on major state affairs and large-scale public projects costing more than 500 billion won.

In promoting Government 3.0, the crucial factor is how to overcome public officials’ resistance to information disclosure. Korean officials are notorious for their tendency to keep whatever data they have secret. They often categorize even publicly available information as unsuitable for disclosure.

The blueprint unveiled Wednesday simply promises to make public 100 million items of information a year without specifying how government officials will be encouraged to be more positive about sharing their data with the public.

There is one more thing the government should heed. While it is important to expand information disclosure, a more important thing is to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information disclosed, because providing inaccurate information is worse than not providing it at all.