[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on the 29th, "Our country’s public data infrastructure based on e-government is excellent enough to rank first in the world in the digital government evaluation conducted for the first time by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently," adding, "Now is the time to newly establish the basic framework for utilizing public data so that the world’s best digital government capabilities lead to innovation across all industries."
Prime Minister Chung presided over the 116th National Policy Issue Inspection and Coordination Meeting held at the Government Seoul Office on the same day and stated, "Data is becoming increasingly important as a driving force for economic development in an intelligent hyper-connected society following the advancement of ICT technology."
He emphasized, "We intend to maximize the disclosure of public data, which until now has only been accessible from the perspective of the public’s right to know, to promote the growth of related industries. First, we will expand the opening of data in the health insurance and national tax sectors, which are directly related to citizens’ daily lives and economic activities and have a vast amount of data with very high utilization value."
He continued, "We will broadly provide national health information so that new markets can open in the high value-added industries such as new drugs and new medical devices in the healthcare sector, and we will also expand the scope of disclosure of national tax data, which was difficult to disclose due to sensitive information, according to user demand."
Prime Minister Chung said, "The government is focusing on building a data dam as one pillar of the Digital New Deal," adding, "The value of a dam depends on securing sufficient water sources and how timely it can supply clean water desired by consumers."
He also stated, "Likewise, data must be provided in areas where citizens and companies want to utilize it to be effective," and urged, "Relevant ministries and agencies should take special care to ensure that high-quality data that meets demand is abundantly supplied."
During the meeting, measures to revitalize intellectual property transactions were also discussed.
Prime Minister Chung explained, "The industrial ecosystem in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution is rapidly changing beyond comparison due to technological convergence across fields. There was a time when a single company could be the best in all fields, but that era is now over," adding, "Major global companies such as Google are creating new added value through the exchange and transaction of intellectual property and mergers between companies."
He continued, "Our country has the world’s highest ratio of research and development (R&D) investment to gross domestic product (GDP) and an environment where intellectual property can be actively traded, but there has been a structural limitation in that R&D has been conducted mainly by suppliers such as public research institutes and universities, and has not been linked to actual commercialization," adding, "To overcome this, the government plans to significantly expand the network that efficiently connects the entire process of demand, mediation, and supply of intellectual property transactions and actively foster private institutions that support this."
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