The Web Accessibility Crisis of the Korea´s Electronic Government: Fatal Consequences of the Digital Signature Law and Public Key Certificate

Korea´s e-government ranked top in e-government benchmarking for the past five years but showed relatively lower scores in Web accessibility. As a result of the Digital Signature Act, public key certificate was introduced and digital certificate software was developed using de facto technology standards, Microsoft ActiveX. Government, certificate authorities, and certificate consumers all overlooked the implications of using Microsoft standards and ignored criticisms of those who do not use Microsoft products. Government failed to implement digital signature policy successfully. Its consequences include unbelievable Microsoft monopoly with almost 99 percent market shares of Microsoft products, chronic addiction to Microsoft standards, bad computing practices, and fatal Web accessibility problems. ActiveX should be removed immediately to support diverse operating systems and Web browsers. Eventually current client-side certificate should be switched to server-side system. This paper calls for careful evaluation of Korea´s e-government.