Starting by Reflecting on the Voices of Citizens
[Asia Economy Reporter Kiho Sung] Seoul City announced on the 21st that it will actively promote ‘Creative Administration.’ Creative Administration aims to improve administrative services for citizens and advance city governance by having public officials fulfill their duties with proactive attempts and new perspectives.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon emphasized earlier this year at a regular staff meeting that to make Seoul one of the top 5 global cities for companionship and charm, it is necessary to go beyond the existing passive administrative approach and adopt a more challenging attitude of ‘Creative Administration.’
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon is giving a lecture at the 2023 New Year's regular employee ordinance. Photo by Yonhap News
The ‘Creative Administration’ of the 8th term of the elected government will be promoted through five main strategies. ▲Reflecting on citizens’ inconveniences that have been overlooked in one’s own work, ▲establishing a system where anyone can easily and conveniently propose and develop ideas for work improvement, ▲discarding unnecessary tasks that have been difficult to abolish once started despite low sustained benefits and have increased the workload of public officials, ▲enhancing managerial leadership to encourage learning and discussion within the organization, ▲and establishing an immediate and sufficient reward system for those who actively propose and successfully implement work improvement ideas.
The first step of ‘Creative Administration’ begins by revisiting the citizens’ complaints about administrative services that have been received through many channels. Rather than discovering grand and innovative new policies, the focus is on creating small but meaningful changes in citizens’ daily lives by each department or team.
The second aspect of Creative Administration is to establish a system where public officials can propose various policy ideas and develop them. ▲Idea discovery, ▲support for supplementation and development to concretize ideas, ▲adoption of feasible excellent ideas, ▲additional support for nurturing and developing ideas for challenging tasks, ▲prompt decision-making for actual implementation, and ▲sharing of results will be systematically supported until the proposed ideas for improving administrative services are executed.
Third, to ensure that ‘Creative Administration’ does not further increase employees’ workload, inefficient and conventional projects will be boldly terminated. Specifically, ▲projects with low effectiveness compared to input (personnel and budget), ▲projects requiring consolidation due to overlapping similar functions, ▲projects serving only a small number of stakeholders rather than the general public, ▲and projects whose functions have declined due to environmental changes will be terminated promptly to secure momentum for Creative Administration.
The fourth strategy is to change the organizational culture and working methods for Creative Administration. Leadership training for key managers who will lead organizational change will be conducted, and various support systems will be prepared to enable Seoul city public officials to voluntarily discuss and learn.
Finally, Seoul City will establish a creative reward system that provides sufficient and definite monetary and personnel rewards that even younger generation public officials can feel, to employees who actively and creatively perform their duties and produce results that improve citizens’ quality of life.
The ‘Creative Administration Reward System’ will adopt a stepwise differential reward method, where ‘creative ideas’ will be rewarded ‘immediately’ with monetary rewards or special leave, while personnel benefits will be granted when ‘creative proposals are directly implemented’ and produce tangible results that citizens can feel, thereby clarifying rewards according to ‘performance.’
Accordingly, to encourage active idea submission from employees, feasibility and excellence will be evaluated every quarter, and outstanding proposers will receive exceptional monetary rewards of up to 5 million KRW per individual.
Kim Eui-seung, Seoul City Administrative Deputy Mayor, said, “The core of this Creative Administration is to establish an environment where public officials actively work for citizens themselves,” adding, “We will listen carefully to and consider even small and precious opinions from citizens, ensure sufficient rewards for employees who improve administrative services innovatively, and create an organizational culture where anyone can discuss and debate together in daily work.”
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