3 Billion KRW Invested
"Cost Savings and Enhanced Security"
On December 22, Jeonbuk Special Self-Governing Province officially launched its "generative artificial intelligence (AI) system" to enhance administrative work efficiency.
According to the province, this self-developed system is being recognized as a case that simultaneously achieves cost savings and strengthened security, setting a new direction for digital transformation in the public sector.
The province invested a total project budget of 300 million KRW, including GPU servers, to build the system. In March, Jeonbuk Province signed a business agreement with the Software-Centered University Project Group at Jeonbuk National University and, with development support from students in the Department of Computer and Artificial Intelligence, completed the system using in-house technology without purchasing any commercial software.
This construction cost is only up to 1/40 of that of other metropolitan governments such as Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Gyeongbuk, which have introduced similar AI systems at costs ranging from at least 1.6 billion KRW to as much as 13.1 billion KRW.
The province expects to save approximately 2.57 billion KRW in annual costs by avoiding subscriptions to commercial generative AI services (such as the ChatGPT Team Plan) for all employees, and to reduce annual maintenance costs to about 30 million KRW, resulting in an annual budget saving of over 2.5 billion KRW.
The newly established system features an interface similar to ChatGPT, which users are already familiar with. It provides functions that can be immediately utilized for administrative tasks, including web search and question enhancement, automatic creation of Hangul (HWP) documents, document text conversion (OCR), voice conversion, and image generation.
To enhance the reliability of responses, the system is designed to cross-verify results by integrating various commercial AI models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, alongside its internal high-performance language model.
It also supports infographic image generation using Google’s "Nanobanana Pro," as well as automatic PowerPoint creation, coding, and advanced reasoning through external commercial AI integration.
From a security perspective, a private approach was adopted so that administrative information is processed only on internal servers, preventing data from leaking externally. By leveraging existing security infrastructure, the province established a multi-layered security system, including internal-external network separation, firewalls, and an intrusion prevention system (IPS). On November 5, the system officially passed a security review by the National Intelligence Service, confirming its safety.
Prior to the official launch, a preliminary test was conducted from November 3 to 5, with 607 provincial government employees participating. According to the survey, the system scored 88 points for user convenience, 82 points for overall satisfaction, and 80 points for contribution to work performance. Feedback included requests for linking to legal databases and expanding video and PowerPoint creation features. Based on the results of the internal survey and preliminary test, the province expects a reduction in simple and repetitive work and improved administrative efficiency.
Starting December 23, the province will provide user training for employees and plans to launch a dedicated mobile application (iOS and Android) in January next year. The province also intends to gradually implement API integration with government-wide AI and public data portals.
Kim Kwan-young, Governor of Jeonbuk Province, stated, "We will increase system utilization to achieve real innovation in our work and plan to expand its rollout to cities and counties in the future. We will continue to make improvements so that Jeonbuk can establish itself as a leading local government in digital administrative innovation."
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