Korea to introduce hyper-scale AI for government administrative services

Koh Jean, chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Digital Platform Government [Photo by Yonhap]

The South Korean government will introduce the world’s first hyper-scale artificial intelligence (AI) for the government, which will dramatically improve the quality of its administrative services, according to Koh Jean, chairman of the Presidential Committee on the Digital Platform Government.

“I will make sure that key policies closely related to the livelihoods of the people will be sought through data analysis based on objective facts,” Koh said.

His remarks were made in a special column published in the latest issue of DT Quarterly, an online magazine published by the Korea Industrial Technology Association.

In the column, titled, “Digital Platform Government, Korea’s National Strategic Industry,” Koh introduced the “Digital Platform Government (DPG) Hub,” a key infrastructure to implement a digital platform government using both private and public data and services.

According to the diagram overviewing the hub, Naver Corp., SK telecom Co., LG Electronics Inc., and Kakao Brain Corp. will provide hyperscale AI infrastructure for the government’s plan.

Companies like OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and Google LLC, were initially included as private sector participants but have been removed due to concerns about implementing foreign AI models for a government project.

The DPG Hub will provide a one-stop service that integrates key online government administration services, including tax and company registry services, and integrate central-local government systems to cover the government intranet systems, public education systems, and laws and regulation systems.

“There are about 17,000 different systems that have been developed and are in operations separately,” said Song Ho-cheol, head of platform business at Douzone Bizon Co., who is leading the government’s project.

“We’re trying to create a hub that connects all of the systems,” he said, adding that private sector software and applications will be used in the form of application program interfaces (APIs) to access government data more conveniently.

Koh also said the DPG Hub will enable businesses to develop and provide creative and innovative services, while providing the public with new forms of public services.

For example, a startup can use the DPG Hub to analyze traffic data from the police and personal driving habits data from navigation companies and to create a customized safe route service, from which the public can benefit, Koh said.

The DPG Hub project is expected to eliminate the need for document submissions for administrative services by 2026, resulting in an estimated annual cost savings of up to 2 trillion won ($1.54 billion), according to Koh.

He expected 70 percent of the government systems would be cloud-based.