[Seoul, Now] Mastering Administration Through Effective Benchmarking

Reduce Trial and Error, Accelerate Know-how Acquisition
Provide More Generous and Substantial Rewards for Public Servants

Minjin Kim, Head of the Local Government Team, Social Affairs Department.

A district office awarded an exemplary public servant prize to an employee who proposed an idea related to a "Single-Person Household Well-being Monitoring System." This system automatically checks on the well-being of welfare recipients by utilizing phone call records, mobile applications, door sensors, and electricity usage sensors. By leveraging this system, which was developed by the private sector, it is possible to see positive effects in various areas, such as preventing solitary deaths and responding to emergencies among vulnerable groups like elderly people or individuals with disabilities who live alone. The system flags certain individuals, prompting officials to call them, and if there is no answer, a public servant visits in person to check for any accidents or problems.

Since other local governments had previously introduced similar systems, I asked about it. The district office responded, "If residents need it, we actively encourage the discovery and adoption of benchmarking ideas." The main evaluation criteria are not whether the idea is the very first, but whether it can be implemented immediately and whether its application can both improve work efficiency and provide tangible benefits to residents.

Recently, a system has been developed that installs non-contact biometric radar sensors in indoor areas such as bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms, and entrances, to detect and analyze biometric signals and movement changes in real time, 24 hours a day. These include heart rate, respiratory rate, body temperature, whether a fall has occurred, presence in the home, and activity levels. Although this is still in the pilot stage and requires the subject's consent for installation, if applied well, it is expected to be highly effective in preventing solitary deaths and responding to emergencies. If more public servants think about ways to perform their duties more effectively and actively advocate for the adoption of such systems, their spread will accelerate.

The "KakaoTalk Queue Notification Service," widely used for waiting lists at popular restaurants, has also been well received. This year, an employee at a district office applied this service to a community service center and received praise and a reward. Although this service is already well-known in the private sector, its evaluation in the public sector focused on whether it had been practically applied and proven effective. With the notification service, citizens can take care of other tasks nearby and use their waiting time more freely.

Efforts such as securing parking spaces and introducing crowd management systems in densely populated areas are also common examples of award-winning initiatives. These include cases where officials continuously persuaded owners of idle private land to alleviate neighborhood parking shortages at low cost and in a short period, or where they built smart maps using telecom base station data to monitor real-time foot traffic and crowd density.

Active administration is not an idea contest, so originality is not always required. Since stability is crucial in administration, ideas that are merely new or untested may actually be difficult to implement. Active administration means that public servants do not interpret regulations passively or cling to them, but instead handle their duties proactively for the public good. Adopting new ways of working to solve problems, different from previous methods, also falls under active administration.

Benchmarking is especially necessary in administration, where stability is important, because it reduces trial and error and allows for the rapid acquisition of know-how. Many districts in Seoul are expanding their systems for rewarding outstanding public servants who demonstrate active administration. Such rewards should be even more generous and substantial. To raise the overall standard of an organization, incentives are more effective than punishments.

I also thought it would be beneficial to have a dedicated policy benchmarking team. By collecting and evaluating good policies from outside sources by field, and carefully selecting and implementing what is needed, it is possible to achieve passing marks and even become a "master of administration." Benchmarking does not mean simply copying; it means learning from and improving upon the best practices in the field.