The government has set the implementation of 'Digital Platform Government' as a key investment direction in the 2023 budget plan, aiming to enable citizens, businesses, and government to jointly solve social problems and create new value on a digital platform where all data is connected.

According to the comprehensive analysis of South Korea's 2023 budget plan, the budget for the 2023 Digital Platform Government implementation projects has been compiled at 405 billion won, an increase of 116.8 billion won (40.5%) compared to the previous year.

Major projects include △expansion of information protection infrastructure, construction of cloud-based integrated address system (Ministry of Interior and Safety) △high-precision electronic progress (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport) △comprehensive information support system for infectious disease prevention and management, One Health infectious disease risk information system construction (Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency) △support for utilization of ultra-large-scale AI digital platform infrastructure (Ministry of Science and Technology) and others.

The Ministry of Interior and Safety oversees a total of 12 detailed projects, with a 2023 budget of 152.272 billion won in total.

The 'Public Data Disclosure and Utilization Activation Support Project' focuses on content such as public data standardization and has been allocated the largest amount at 38.284 billion won. Following that are the 'Information Protection Infrastructure Expansion Project' with 25.67 billion won and the 'Data-driven Administration Activation Project' with 22.734 billion won. The highest budget increase rates were shown in information protection infrastructure expansion and public data disclosure and utilization activation support.

Under the Ministry of Science and Technology, there are 6 detailed projects, with a 2023 budget of 28.45 billion won newly allocated.

The 'Digital Platform Government Citizen-Centric Leading Project' was allocated 10.35 billion won and accounts for the largest share. Additionally, 7 billion won was allocated to the Digital Platform Government Innovation Service Testbed Support Project.

■ Presentation of necessary items for budget review and supplementation

Although these projects were presented as government policy tasks in 2022, an analysis has indicated that ambiguity exists regarding the concept of digital platform government, the scope of projects, and direction due to inadequate roadmaps.

Measures such as △establishment of concrete roadmaps △clarification of relationships between new plans and other plans △establishment of relationships with informatization project implementation plans △review of government roles appear necessary to be prepared.

For example, the Ministry of Science and Technology's 'Testbed Support Project' helps prepare testbed environments for small and medium-sized enterprises to develop and verify digital platform government innovation services and APIs. The budget was allocated at 7 billion won. However, it was compiled without prior demand surveys and issues were raised that a list of candidate projects has not been prepared. The Ministry of Science and Technology added that it plans to conduct project demand surveys through public competitions after budget confirmation.

Additionally, integration and linkage measures for similar and duplicate projects should be reviewed, and precautions are necessary when selecting projects during project implementation.

The Ministry of Science and Technology's 'Support for Private Cutting-edge Ultra-large-scale AI Utilization Project' helps small and medium-sized enterprises and other private sectors develop AI products and services for public sector applications using commercialized ultra-large-scale AI models. The budget was newly allocated at 2 billion won. However, this appears to lack differentiation from the 'High-performance Computing Support' project as part of the 'Intelligent Information Industry Infrastructure Development' project conducted since 2017.

Some projects also raise concerns about security, requiring sufficient review and preparation of countermeasures.

The 'Data Lake Operation Project' involves accumulating data in private clouds to create data lakes and opening them to the private sector. Security reviews appear necessary in the process of decrypting existing encrypted data for data migration and accumulation as well as in the process of accumulating and opening data based on private cloud infrastructure.