'Activation of Proactive Administration' Aiming for National Performance Achievement... Strengthening Inspection of Structural and Habitual Misconduct

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] On the 18th, the government held a meeting of auditors from 45 central administrative agencies at the Government Seoul Office, chaired by Noh Hyung-wook, Minister of Government Policy Coordination, to discuss this year's activity directions and key promotion tasks for public service duty management.

The government decided to pursue five key initiatives aimed at establishing public service discipline and settling proactive administration to achieve national policy outcomes: ▲Supporting the achievement of national policy outcomes ▲Strengthening inspection of structural and habitual misconduct ▲Establishing firm duty discipline ▲Strict adherence to political neutrality of public officials ▲Boosting morale of outstanding public officials.

First, to support the achievement of national policy outcomes, the government plans to establish a culture of proactive work processing within the public service. To this end, it will inspect the operation status of proactive administration by each agency, improve underperforming agencies through consulting, and apply a zero-tolerance principle to malicious and habitual passive administration, strictly punishing such cases. In particular, collaboration deficiencies and policy confusion caused by departmental selfishness will be inspected from the perspective of policy demanders and strictly punished.

Additionally, to realize a fair society, the government plans to eradicate unfair practices in the public sector. It will continuously monitor undue preferential treatment, discrimination, and abusive behavior toward citizens in public contracts, permits and approvals, and budget operation processes, which are of high public interest. Furthermore, inspection activities will be strengthened regarding three major misconduct areas: misconduct related to public institution budget execution, misconduct in agencies providing public services, and local government endemic corruption; as well as two increasing misconduct areas: environment and energy, and research and development; and acts damaging the dignity of public officials.

Moreover, to establish firm duty discipline, the government will promote proactive public service discipline activities through effective role-sharing and cooperation among related agencies depending on the issue. Joint inspections by the Prime Minister's Office and related ministries will be conducted regarding local government endemic corruption and research and development-related misconduct.

In addition, ahead of the general election, to maintain political neutrality of public officials, the government plans to block violations of election neutrality by public officials through information sharing and joint crackdowns among election management-related agencies. Preventive inspections will also be strengthened to ensure no cases of data leakage, duty violations, or negligence in work processing occur during the election period.

Minister Noh said, "This year is an important time to produce national policy outcomes that the public can feel," and urged, "Auditors should have a firmer sense of mission and strive to establish a culture of proactive administration in the public service so that visible results of national policy tasks can be achieved."