The digital transformation of governments is essential to address the multi-faceted and complex challenges that countries face, from rapid technological advancement and shifting economic landscapes, to global health emergencies and growing societal needs and expectations. The OECD Digital Government Reviews aim to support governments’ digital transformation by assessing their policies and practices to address such challenges and benefit from emerging opportunities.
The Government of Korea has achieved significant progress in digital transformation of the public sector, placing digital government at the centre of its administrative reforms and public services over the past decades. Korea continues to advance digital transformation in the public sector in alignment with the priorities of the OECD Public Governance Committee and the Working Party of Senior Digital Government Officials (E-Leaders), including the Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies (2014), Enhancing Access to and Sharing of Data (2021), the Governance of Digital Identity (2023), and Human-centred Public Administrative Services (2024). To support this commitment, the Digital Government Review of Korea focuses on four areas:
Strengthening governance, investment, and skills for digital government
Improving data governance, sharing, and use
Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) for government transformation
Delivering human-centred and proactive public services
Conducted at the request of the Korean government, with engagement of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) and peers from New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this Digital Government Review uses the four OECD recommendations mentioned above and the OECD Digital Government Policy Framework to structure its assessment. The review is informed by the 2023 Digital Government Index, the OECD Survey on Digital Government 3.0, a survey of 13 public sector institutions, fact-finding interviews, as well as desk research.
The review will help the Government of Korea fully leverage the benefits of digital technologies, including AI and data to support an agile, citizen-centred transformation of the public sector that can improve social well-being and unleash the productivity of the Korean economy. The OECD remains ready to support digital transformation in Korea through the implementation of the recommendations elaborated in this review.