Robust, open data foundations power South Korea’s AI digital government vision

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South Korea's commitment to collaborative digital governance was apparent to this writer at a presentation by the National Information Society Agency (NIA) at a closed-door United Nations (UN) forum last year.

There, the NIA’s spokesperson shared about the agency’s international work with regional governments like Laos PDR and Mongolia, focusing on capacity building in open data and data quality management.

This revealed how the nation sees the interconnected nature of digital governance and its potential for global impact.

But more importantly, the government’s focus on high-quality and interoperable open data underscored a shift in the approach to how the Asian Tiger built its digital government.

Beyond just implementing efficiency-focused digital solutions, the agency has been going back to the basics to build a robust data foundation that powers the country’s digital transformation.

“To embrace new artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the public sector, legal and institutional frameworks are more important than technical implementations,” says NIA’s Executive Principal, Yoo Jae-sin, in an interview with GovInsider.

Having ranked first in OECD’s Digital Government Index for the second time, South Korea is now looking to move to the next phase of digital government, an AI government.

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Government as a Platform

The term “digital platform government (DPG)” has been coined by the government to signal a shift away from e-government.

While e-government simply digitises services to improve administrative efficiency for public officers, digital platform government aims to provide integrated, personalised and proactive services from the citizen’s perspective.

“To achieve this, various government agencies’ data needs to be integrated, and public-private cooperation is strengthened to provide personalised services through a platform-based governance model,” says Yoo.

The public sector is also currently moving to the cloud, which will become a key enabler for agencies to tap on emerging technologies like AI and analytics.

Given AI's increasing prominence and the pivotal role of data in its utilisation, South Korea's established strength in high-quality, interoperable open data offers its government a significant competitive advantage.

GovInsider previously reported how open data is fueling AI innovation among South Korean companies, accompanied by a rising interest from public agencies to use this data to train AI models.

Focus on integration, not building more

Yoo shares that with AI adoption, NIA is moving away from the traditional, build-it-yourself approach.

“Traditionally, advanced private sector technologies were applied to the public sector through on-premise system integration deployments. called system integrations (SI),” he explains.

The rapidly evolving nature of emerging technologies like AI means that the public sector struggles to keep pace with such conventions.

As a result, the agency is moving towards strategically leveraging on private sector innovations through a common generative AI (GenAI) foundation for the government.

The common foundation allows public officials to use AI services conveniently and securely.

Additionally, instead of developing its own AI models and infrastructure from scratch, the government is choosing to tap into private sector innovations from local companies through subscription services.

On emerging technologies that the government is looking to harness, Yoo highlights generative AI (GenAI) and AI agents to automate public services and customise government interactions for citizens.

As more agencies move to the cloud, the government is also looking to ramp up adoption of cloud-native technologies to enhance flexibility in delivering digital citizen services.

Prioritising high-impact use cases

From last August to this February, the overarching Ministry of the Interior and Safety of South Korea (MOIS) conducted a project which leveraged AI for data analyses in sectors closely related to people’s lives.

“The projects were selected based on demand surveys from central ministries, local governments, and public institutions, with a focus on topics closely related to citizens' daily lives,” according to an official press release provided by Yoo.

During this period, a total of 158 types of data analyses were conducted across five sectors, namely public safety, labour and welfare, public health, public convenience and work innovation.

These data analyses ranged from using AI to detect voice phishing, deepfake content, estimate the number of passengers getting off public transportation, forecast crop pest and disease risk, to predict drug shortages in the pharmaceutical supply chain and more.

According to Yoo, the government will continue to improve the quality of data analysis and ensure concrete public service improvements.

To achieve the objectives, the Ministry will collaborate with other public institutions and experts to ensure high effectiveness of the AI models and widespread adoption in the public.