Skip Navigation
South Korea

Open Communication Forum (KR0041)

Overview

At-a-Glance

Action Plan: South Korea Action Plan 2018-2020

Action Plan Cycle: 2018

Status: Active

Institutions

Lead Institution: Public Participation Policy Division, Ministry of the Interior and Safety

Support Institution(s): Hyeonjik Lee, Deputy Director, Public Participation Policy Division, Ministry of the Interior and Safety (supporting the operation of the open communication forum)

Policy Areas

E-Government, Public Participation

IRM Review

IRM Report: South Korea Design Report 2018-2020

Starred: Pending IRM Review

Early Results: Pending IRM Review

Design i

Verifiable: Yes

Relevant to OGP Values: Civic Participation , Technology

Potential Impact:

Implementation i

Completion: Pending IRM Review

Description

Operation of an On- and Off-line Open Communication Forum ‘Gwanghwamoon 1st Street'
Commitment Start and End Date
September 1, 2018 ~ August 31, 2020
Lead Implementing Agency/Actor
Public Participation Policy Division, Ministry of the Interior and Safety
Commitment Description
What is the public problem that the commitment will address?
Shortly after the inauguration, the Moon administration took in policy proposals from citizens for 50 days (May 25 – July 12, 2017) by launching the Gwanghwamoon 1st Street, a communication channel, at Sejongno Park. Of 180,705 sets of idea collected through the Gwanghwamoon 1st Street, 1,718 were selected, and 99 of them were reflected to the Moon administration’s policy tasks. Indeed, this case showed the public’s drive for participation in policy making. Consequently, a sufficient channel that enables public access and actually facilitatescitizen participation needs to be built to respond to the skyrocketing demand amongst citizens for citizen participation such as opinion sharing, discussions and consultations.
What is the commitment?
The purpose of this commitment is to expand the on- and off-line public participation platform which boosts citizen participation and taps into the public’s collective intelligence in policy making. The primary content of the commitment is as follows: find topics for discussion such as chronic social problems and causes for inconvenience that affect people’s lives; operate a public platform for policy discussions to have the public’s input in the solution building process; provide integrated services to diversify channels of citizen participation in policy making through conneted participation channels of multiple organizations and providing a single point of access to relevant services.
How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?
The detailed implementation methods are as follows: 1) to operate an off-line open communication forum as a public policy discussion platform where citizens, experts and public servants discuss social issues closely related with people’s lives; to host open communication forums and policy conferences on a regular basis, thereby collecting policy suggestions and forwarding them to relevant offices so that they could be reflected in policy making; to send the forum outcome report to relevant ministries as an official document so that the ministries could collaborate through conducting follow-up meetings and discussions to reflect the outcomes in policy making; to share the entire process with the public through the “the Day of Citizen Participation“ ceremony and the publication of a white paper; 2) to provide O2O services via the online citizen participation platform (website); to re-launch the website, currently in provisional operation, as the online citizen participation platform, providing live video streaming of forums and a real-time comment feature during the later half of this year in connection with other citizen participation platforms such as People’s Idea Box, an online platform for policy proposals, and e-People officer; to bring about a paradigm shift in the government’s operation so that the public could transform social issues into policy agenda and work with the government to solve problems
Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?
Citizen Participation
Exchange and Peer Learning
The Director of the Public Participation Policy Division participated in the 2018 IIAS held in Tunis, Tunisia on June 27, delivering a presentation on the Gwanghwamoon 1st Street, selected as a best practice for inclusive governance, and a Q&A session
Additional Information
Budget for 2019: 1.46 billion won
Milestone Activity with a Verifiable Deliverable
Hosting the 10th Open Communication Forum
Hosting a regional conference (‘island’ theme)
Hosting a policy conference
Hosting the 2019 Open Communication Forum
Contact Information
Title, Division
Deputy Director, Public Participation Policy Division
Email and Phone
mark@korea.kr, +82-2-2100-3462
Other Actors Involved,
Hyeonjik Lee, Deputy Director, Public Participation Policy Division, Ministry of the Interior and Safety (supporting the operation of the open communication forum)

IRM Midterm Status Summary

5-2. Operation of an On-and Offline Open Communication Forum "Gwanghwamoon 1st street"

Commitment Text:

"Operation of an On-and Off-line Open Communication Forum "Gwanghwamoon 1st Street'"

The purpose of this commitment is to expand the on- and off-line public participation platform which boosts citizen participation and taps into the public's collective intelligence in policy making. The primary content of the commitment is as follows: find topics for discussion such as chronic social problems and causes for inconvenience that affect people's lives; operate a public platform for policy discussions to have the public's input in the solution building process; provide integrated services to diversify channels of citizen participation in policy making through connected participation channels of multiple organizations and providing a single point of access to relevant services.

The detailed implementation methods are as follows:

1) to operate an off-line open communication forum as a public policy discussion platform where citizens, experts and public servants discuss social issues closely related with people's lives; to host open communication forums and policy conferences on a regular basis, thereby collecting policy suggestions and forwarding them to relevant offices so that they could be reflected in policy making; to send the forum outcome report to relevant ministries as an official document so that the ministries could collaborate through conducting follow-up meetings and discussions to reflect the outcomes in policy making; to share the entire process with the public through the "the Day of Citizen Participation" ceremony and the publication of a white paper;

2) to provide O2O services via the online citizen participation platform (website); to re-launch the website, currently in provisional operation, as the online citizen participation platform, providing live video streaming of forums and a real-time comment feature during the later half of this year in connection with other citizen participation platforms such as People's Idea Box, an online platform for policy proposals, and e-People officer; to bring about a paradigm shift in the government's operation so that the public could transform social issues into policy agenda and work with the government to solve problems.

Milestones:

  • Hosting the 10th Open Communication Forum
  • Hosting a regional conference ('island' theme)
  • Hosting a policy conference
  • Hosting the 2019 Open Communication Forum

Start Date: 1 September 2018 End Date: 31 August 2020

Editorial Note: For the full text of the commitment, please see Korea's 4th National Action Plan 2018-2020 at https://bit.ly/2JvQr98.

Commitment Overview

Verifiability

OGP Value Relevance (as written)

Potential Impact

Completion

Did It Open Government?

Not specific enough to be verifiable

Specific enough to be verifiable

Access to Information

Civic Participation

Public Accountability

Technology & Innovation for Transparency & Accountability

None

Minor

Moderate

Transformative

Not Started

Limited

Substantial

Completed

Worsened

Did Not Change

Marginal

Major

Outstanding

5-2. Overall

✔

✔

✔

✔

Assessed at the end of the action plan cycle.

Assessed at the end of the action plan cycle.

Context and Objectives

The purpose of this commitment is to expand an on- and offline public participation platform called "Gwanghwamoon 1st street." Following South Korea's "candlelight protest" [25] and an earlier-than-scheduled presidential election, the newly elected Moon administration initially launched the Gwanghwamoon 1st street initiative in 2017 as an offline venue (and later online) to collect ideas from the public at the beginning of its term. [26] Specifically, the project started as an alternative to the Moon administration's transition office to reflect citizens' voices in the new government's priorities and policies. Within a period of 50 days, the project collected over 180,000 proposals.

Building on this successful initiation, this commitment aims to expand the Gwanghwamoon 1st street platform's capacity to boost citizen participation and gather public input. The commitment activities seek to identify chronic social problems and address them by operating public forums for policy discussions between citizens and policymakers. The commitment also aims to relaunch an online platform that connects multiple participation channels and directs citizens to offline services via announcements and livestreams. The commitment indicates South Korea will forward policy ideas and forum outcomes to relevant ministries and that it will organize a "Day of Citizen Participation" to share the entire process with the public through a ceremony and white paper.

This commitment is relevant to the OGP value of civic participation as it increases opportunities for citizens to inform government policymaking. It is also relevant to the value of technology and innovation for transparency and accountability as it uses technological solutions to enable civic participation through the Gwanghwamoon 1st street online platform.

The milestones are generally verifiable and specific. The commitment notes its focus on improving the Gwanghwamoon 1st street platform and has verifiable milestones to the extent that they refer to concrete and specific outputs (e.g., hosting the 10th Open Communication Forum or hosting a policy conference). The dates for these activities are clearly outlined. However, the milestones do not appear to speak to all components of the commitment outlined in action plan.

Prior to this commitment, Gwanghwamoon 1st street facilitated citizen participation through idea generation and policy consultations. [27] It is an open forum where citizens and public servants discuss social issues and design corresponding policy programs. It also connects citizens to existing online citizen participation platforms such as People's Voice, [28] Blue House Petition, [29] and the newly launched People's Idea Box. As previously described, Gwanghwamoon 1st street originally collected over 180,000 ideas from the public and the Moon administration established 99 ideas as policy tasks.

This commitment adds value to the existing platform by organizing a number of events, forums, and conferences where citizens can share their ideas on policy. However, the commitment stands to have minor potential impact as it does not lay out innovative, ambitious measures and deliverables to ensure this continued civic participation will affect the policy process. For example, the commitment does not propose any mechanisms or mandates to ensure citizens ideas can actually inform or lead to policy changes. Despite this, in 2018, the government reported that 72 citizen proposals were selected from the Gwanghwamoon 1st street platform, of which 45 (62.5%) were reflected in policies. [30] While the process of translating and developing a citizen proposal into policy is carried out by the government in a transparent manner—and made public on the Gwanghwamoon 1st street website—there remains opportunity to ensure that such deliberation is done systematically, with clear opportunities for citizens to inform and engage in all stages of the policy development process.

Next steps

Noting that this commitment builds on a pre-existing initiative, the IRM recommends pursuing more ambitious milestones that could potentially transform business as usual if this commitment is carried forward into future action plans.

The IRM also recommends the following considerations:

  • Consider developing verifiable indicators to measure whether Gwanghwamoon 1st street activities have led to new policies and whether those policies are effective. For example, this could include a formal milestone for agencies' consideration of citizens' policy ideas.
  • Consider the institutionalization of Gwanghwamoon 1st street, for example through legislation.
[25] Sun-Chul Kim, "South Korea's candlelight protests" (EastAsiaForum, 7 Feb. 2017), https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/02/07/south-koreas-candlelight-protests/.
[26] Gwanghwamoon 1st street is available at: https://www.gwanghwamoon1st.go.kr/front/main/index.do.
[27] The Government of the Republic of Korea, Korea's 4th National Action Plan 2018−2020 (OGP, Aug. 2018), https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/south-korea-action-plan-2018-2020/.
[28] People's voice, a long-time existing online platform of citizen participation, can be found here: https://www.vop.co.kr/index.html
[29] Blue House, Presidential Office, "국민청" [Petition and Citizen Participation] (accessed Jul. 2020), https://www1.president.go.kr/petitions.
[30] The Ministry of the Interior and Safety, "Comments received during pre-publication review of the draft IRM Design Report 2018-2020", July 2020

Commitments

  1. Public-Private Anti-Corruption System

    KR0036, 2018, Anti-Corruption

  2. Management System for Performance Venues

    KR0037, 2018, Access to Information

  3. Real-Name Policy System

    KR0038, 2018, Access to Information

  4. Safety Inspection System

    KR0039, 2018, E-petitions

  5. Public Diplomacy System

    KR0040, 2018, Public Participation

  6. Open Communication Forum

    KR0041, 2018, E-Government

  7. Citizen Participation in Policy-Making

    KR0042, 2018, E-Government

  8. Disclosure of the Amount of Harmful Substance Contained in Foods

    KR0043, 2018, Access to Information

  9. Open Data

    KR0044, 2018, Access to Information

  10. Discosure of Cultural Heritage Resources

    KR0045, 2018, Infrastructure & Transport

  11. Open National Priority Data

    KR0046, 2018, Access to Information

  12. Public Data Qulity Management

    KR0047, 2018, Access to Information

  13. Voluntary Compliance Customs Administration

    KR0048, 2018, Capacity Building

  14. Organization Information Disclosure Online

    KR0022, 2016, Access to Information

  15. Information in Original Form

    KR0023, 2016, Access to Information

  16. Standard Model for Pre-Release Information

    KR0024, 2016, Access to Information

  17. National Data Disclosure

    KR0025, 2016, Access to Information

  18. Public Data Quality Management

    KR0026, 2016, Access to Information

  19. Free Open Format Use

    KR0027, 2016, Access to Information

  20. Open Data Standards

    KR0028, 2016, Access to Information

  21. Citizen Groups Government Service Design

    KR0029, 2016, Capacity Building

  22. e-Government Service Environment

    KR0030, 2016, E-Government

  23. Citizen Service Portals

    KR0031, 2016, Capacity Building

  24. Citizen Services Application

    KR0032, 2016, Anti-Corruption

  25. Public Sector Corruption Research

    KR0033, 2016, E-Government

  26. Citizens' Accessibility to ODA Statistics

    KR0034, 2016, Aid

  27. Disclosing Information on International Aids

    KR0035, 2016, Aid

  28. Strengthening Public-Private Collaboration

    KR0017, 2014, E-Government

  29. Providing Customized Services

    KR0018, 2014, Marginalized Communities

  30. Enhancing Information Disclosure

    KR0019, 2014, Access to Information

  31. Strengthening Public Service Ethics

    KR0020, 2014, Anti-Corruption

  32. Encouraging the Private Sector to Utilze Public Data

    KR0021, 2014, Access to Information

  33. Provision of Diverse Public Services

    KR0001, 2012, E-Government

  34. Strengthening Citizens’ Monitoring of Government

    KR0002, 2012, Fiscal Openness

  35. Use e-People to Promote Public Input in Policy Development

    KR0003, 2012, Public Participation

  36. Promote the Proposal System for Receiving Public Input Electronically

    KR0004, 2012, E-Government

  37. Develop a Manual on Consensus Building Among Various Stakeholders

    KR0005, 2012, E-Government

  38. Conduct Field Visits to Interact Directly with Stakeholders

    KR0006, 2012, E-Government

  39. Simplify Online Civil Affairs Application Forms

    KR0007, 2012, E-Government

  40. Refine the Portal to Be More User Friendly

    KR0008, 2012,

  41. Customise Online Services for Business

    KR0009, 2012, Private Sector

  42. Establish an Online Civil Affairs Hub to Provide 24-Hour Services

    KR0010, 2012, E-Government

  43. Disclose Critical Information on Food, Environment, and Education

    KR0011, 2012, E-Government

  44. Engage CSOs on Relevant Information to Be Disclosed

    KR0012, 2012, Public Participation

  45. Strengthen Asset Disclosure for Public Servants

    KR0013, 2012, Anti-Corruption

  46. Monitor Restrictions on Post-Public Employment

    KR0014, 2012, Anti-Corruption

  47. Release Public Information for Private Sector Use on the Data Sharing Portal

    KR0015, 2012, E-Government

  48. Engage Citizens in Administrative and Budget Processes

    KR0016, 2012, E-Government

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!