[Seoul, Now] How to Awaken Passive Public Officials

Dobong District Sees First Special Promotion Since Establishment
More Local Governments Encouraging Proactive Public Officials

Seong Hyang-sook, a child and adolescent affairs officer at Dobong District Office in Seoul, was specially promoted to grade 6 last month. Dobong District promoted her to a higher rank through a separate promotion review, even though she was not on the promotion candidate list. This is the first case in Dobong District and is considered rare enough to be the first among the 25 district offices in Seoul.

Officer Seong created and implemented the ‘Early Intervention and Treatment Support Project for Developmentally Delayed Vulnerable Infants and Toddlers’ introduced by Dobong District in March this year. The core of this project is to identify and support developmentally delayed children early during infancy to enhance treatment effectiveness. It started from the idea that proactive diagnosis is possible by checking the nutrition and health status of the child and primary caregiver such as the mother, the child’s developmental delay, and family depression.

Dobong District selects about 10 outstanding public officials for proactive administration every year in the first and second half of the year and rewards them. Until now, incentives for outstanding proactive public officials included transfer to desired departments and special leave, but this time, personnel benefits such as special promotion appointments and the highest grade of performance bonuses were significantly increased.

Jongno District also selected five outstanding proactive public officials for the first half of the year last week. The main figures include Jo Young-eun, a social welfare officer who established the nation’s first employment competency enhancement center for the visually impaired; Park Su-jeong, a road officer who installed AI brine spraying devices on snow-vulnerable routes; and Park Sang-gyu, a sanitation administration officer who introduced Seoul’s first smart recycling experience vehicle. The district plans to provide them with various incentives such as the highest grade of performance bonuses, a one-year reduction in the period for selecting exemplary public officials, special leave, and priority selection for overseas training.

Gangdong District regularly holds proactive administration support committee meetings to select key tasks and encourage public officials. To reduce concerns about becoming audit targets while engaging in proactive administration, they provide pre-consulting support and strengthen employee protection by activating legal support and immunity protection officer systems for the results of proactive administration. They also operate a proactive administration public application system to create a channel to solve public interest problems caused by unclear laws.

Yongsan District published a casebook last month compiling 16 outstanding proactive administration cases. The purpose is to spread a culture of proactive administration within the organization by sharing cases.

Proactive administration refers to public officials actively handling tasks by demonstrating creativity and expertise for the public interest, such as improving unreasonable regulations. However, the reason public officials are criticized for being passive (welfare inactivity) is that taking initiative increases workload and exercising creativity can lead to troubles. It is difficult to work with only a sense of mission. As workload increases without changes in salary or treatment, and as exercising creativity may lead to audits, lawsuits, or even having to resign, no salaried worker would like such a situation.

Good projects are benchmarked by various local governments. Shared proactive administration cases spread nationwide in no time. Fortunately, the number of district heads encouraging proactive work by public officials and establishing systems to expand appropriate evaluations and incentives is increasing. If well encouraged and discovered, there are plenty of second and third Kim Seon-tae officers from Chungju in Seoul as well.