Oh Se-hoon: "Aiming for Global Top 5 City Competitiveness... Accelerating Creative Administration"

"Achieving Top 5 City Competitiveness through Creative Administration"
Mayor Oh Initiated 'Creative City Governance' in 2006
"Employees Must Voluntarily Lead Innovation"

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon has set a goal to place within the top five of the Global City Comprehensive Competitiveness Index through 'creative administration'.

On the morning of January 12, at the New Year's staff assembly held at Seoul City Hall, Mayor Oh stated, "Last year, Seoul ranked sixth in the Global City Comprehensive Competitiveness Index for the second consecutive year. The gap with Singapore, which is ranked fifth, has narrowed from 98 points to just 5 points. Being one of the global top five cities is no longer a distant dream."

Yonhap News Agency

To enhance the city's competitiveness, Mayor Oh emphasized the need for creative administration. He said, "There are still unresolved challenges before us, such as the imbalance between Gangbuk and Gangnam and housing instability. To leap forward as Seoul's Global Top 5 Future Special City, we must innovate more boldly through creative administration."

Creative administration is an extension of the 'creative city governance' approach that Mayor Oh introduced after his first inauguration in 2006. While creative city governance provided a turning point through the proposal and implementation of innovative and novel ideas, creative administration focuses on advancing core work with a challenging mindset to elevate the level of administrative services for citizens. A representative example is the Banpo Bridge Rainbow Fountain, which was realized through creative city governance.

Mayor Oh remarked, "More than a decade later, upon returning to Seoul City, I found the city had stagnated in many aspects, so I revived creative administration under the name Creative City Governance 2.0. Creativity cannot be produced by command; employees must voluntarily lead innovation."

Mayor Oh also announced plans to actively support employees in utilizing artificial intelligence (AI). He said, "We will operate advanced AI training programs at the Mugyo Government Complex education center and provide intensive six-month AI training to younger employees at grade 6 and below, nurturing them as in-house AI experts. For employees who feel that city-provided training is insufficient, we will support up to 450,000 won per person for AI training at private educational institutions."

Seoul City plans to use this New Year's staff assembly as an opportunity to share the organizational changes brought about by the creative administration DNA with employees and to establish a virtuous cycle in which participation in creative administration leads to tangible results felt by citizens.