Seoul City Hosts 'Seoul Citizen Life Big Data' Policy Competition to Foster Digital Youth Talent

Recruiting 50 Participating Youth
Opportunity to Utilize Detailed 'Seoul Citizen Life Data' Jointly Developed with SK Telecom and Others

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Digital Foundation announced on the 8th that they will hold a city problem-solving competition using Seoul citizen life data over three months from this month to November, recruiting 50 young participants.

The purpose of this competition is to nurture young talent in the data field and spread a culture of public data utilization by allowing young people not only to learn how to analyze and use public data but also to produce results aimed at solving urban problems through proactive analysis and application. A notable feature of this competition is that participants can utilize detailed data from the ‘Seoul Citizen Life Data,’ which Seoul City is jointly developing with SK Telecom and the University of Seoul.

‘Seoul Citizen Life Data’ combines public big data such as population and household statistics with pseudonymized telecommunications data to estimate the living conditions of Seoul citizens, including single-person households. For the general public, summarized (aggregated) data will be released through the Seoul Open Data Plaza in August.

Pseudonymized data refers to data processed so that specific individuals cannot be identified by name, date of birth, or other personal information from the data alone. Following the revision of the Data 3 Act, pseudonymized information can be used for statistical compilation and research purposes without the individual's consent, and it has become possible to combine and analyze various types of data across multiple institutions, including public-to-public and public-to-private sectors.

The competition will proceed in the order of participant recruitment, data education, the competition itself, and an awards ceremony. All participants will take data education courses in August and September and participate in the competition in October. The theme is ‘Solving Urban Problems Using Public Data,’ conducted as a team project, with expert mentoring provided before submitting the final deliverables.

The city problem-solving competition using Seoul Citizen Life Data is open to any young resident of Seoul aged 19 to 39 who is interested in public data. Five outstanding teams will be selected through a final evaluation. Awards include one grand prize team, two excellence award teams, and two merit award teams, with certificates from the Mayor of Seoul and a total prize of 5 million KRW.

Park Jong-su, Director of Smart City Policy, said, “We hope this competition will serve as an opportunity to increase citizens’ use of public data and lay the foundation for revitalizing the data economy.” Kang Yo-sik, Chairman of the Seoul Digital Foundation, said, “We look forward to many young generations leading digital innovation participating.”