Resident Participation and Collaborative Administration Bear Fruit
Clear Upward Trend in Evaluation Performance for Four Consecutive Years
Yecheon-gun has been selected as an outstanding institution in the Ministry of the Interior and Safety's "2025 Local Government Innovation Evaluation," gaining external recognition for its capacity in local government innovation.
The Local Government Innovation Evaluation is the government's representative assessment that comprehensively reviews 10 detailed indicators across 3 areas, including innovation capacity, innovation performance, and autonomous indicators (representative innovation projects and public perception), for local governments nationwide, and then assigns ratings of outstanding, average, or insufficient.
Yecheon-gun Selected as an Outstanding Institution in the 2025 Local Government Innovation Evaluation
Yecheon-gun was listed as an outstanding institution by receiving balanced scores across key indicators such as expanding participation in innovation activities and spreading outcomes, strengthening communication with and participation by residents, revitalizing public-private cooperation, and public perception. In particular, following the upgrade of its rating from "average" to "outstanding" last year, its national ranking also rose sharply from 61st to 16th, numerically demonstrating the results of its systematic administrative innovation efforts.
From the policy planning stage, the county has expanded resident participation and strengthened collaboration-centered administrative operations, while continuously identifying everyday life-oriented innovation projects and focusing on enhancing residents' sense of tangible improvement. These efforts have led to greater administrative efficiency and policy credibility, thereby consolidating the foundation for innovative administration.
The county’s evaluation performance has also shown a steady upward trend. In central, metropolitan, and private evaluations, Yecheon-gun recorded 49 cases in 2022, 52 cases in 2023, 55 cases in 2024, and 66 cases in 2025, marking four consecutive years of increase. It is assessed that, by breaking its own performance record every year, the county is simultaneously boosting both regional administrative competitiveness and policy execution capacity.
A county official stated, "This achievement is the result of the continuous innovation efforts of public officials combined with the active participation of residents," adding, "We will continue to expand practical innovation policies that lead to improvements in residents' quality of life and concentrate our administrative capacity on realizing advanced administration."
This achievement is significant not merely as an improvement in evaluation rankings, but because it shows that the structural reform of local administration has translated into concrete results. In particular, the fact that the basic principles of administration-resident participation and public-private cooperation-have been turned into real policy drivers is evaluated as a case that demonstrates the direction of local government innovation.
Given that Yecheon-gun’s administrative strategy has led to higher rankings not through formalistic innovation aimed only at meeting evaluation indicators, but through changes that residents can actually feel in their daily lives, it deserves close attention. Considering that sustainable regional competitiveness ultimately stems from the innovativeness and execution capacity of administration, this selection as an outstanding institution can be interpreted as a signal that Yecheon-gun is taking another step forward as a future-oriented model of local administration.
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