President Park Geun-hye speaks at a ceremony to declare the Government 3.0 Plan on June 19. (photo: MOSPA)

The Park Geun-hye government has come up with “Government 3.0” Plan to allow wider public access to government data to improve the transparency of state affairs. 

The Government 3.0 Plan was unveiled during a ceremony participated in by President Park Geun-hye on June 19. President Park has made good on one of the promises she made during her presidential campaign — disclosing more government information to the general public.

The Government 3.0 Plan calls for disclosing 100 million government information items to the general public annually, a sharp increase from the 310,000 pieces of government data disclosed during last year. This step is designed to offer government data for commercial use to boost entrepreneurship and promote the creative economy, government officials said. The government will collect opinions on major policies and projects and promote cooperation with the private sector through online, direct democracy, the government said. 

Minister of Safety and Public Administration Yoo Jeong-bok said in an interview, “The Government 3.0 Plan means a complete shift in the paradigm of state affairs to a people-oriented format, not the government’s role as a supplier.” The government’s major focuses for making the government a people-oriented one is about the disclosure of information and openness, Yoo said. He went on to say that the government will allow public access to its own information data ahead of the people’s demand for their disclosure. 

Under the Government 3.0 Plan, Yoo said, the government will be faithful to three principles — disclosing what it is, the whole process and with a focus on people. As a result, the scope of information which will be disclosed will be expanded, he said. Information which has a great impact on public lives, mega-projects requiring massive government fiscal investments and financial information subject to administration audits will be disclosed in advance before public requests are made, thus raising the number of government data, to be disclosed in advance, to the roughly 100 million pieces of government information, a 323-fold jump from the current 310,000 cases. The scope of government entities requiring public access to government information, now starting with central and local governments, will be expanded to committees under the umbrella of each ministry, government-invested institutions, and other auxiliary organizations. 

Such information as those items concerning national security safeguards and things requiring protection for privacy reasons are not disclosed to the general public, however. 

As an example to explain how the Government 3.0 plan will benefit during the June 19 ceremony, President Park cited the recent information sharing case between the Board of Audit and Inspection, police, and the National Health Insurance Service, which led to clues for locating 369 people whose whereabouts have been so far unknown and helping 244 of them return to their families. 

The disclosing and sharing of more government information is expected to make public lives comfortable, Minister Yoo said. The move will allow public utilization of government information, thus creating more jobs, he said. The scope of public access to government information will be expanded to cover such categories as weather, transportation, geographic information, patent, welfare, health/medical services, occupational disaster safety, and education on a step-by-step basis, he said. 

Under the “Government 3.0” plan, the administration said more information will be offered to the public even before requests are made for disclosures. As long as the information is not classified as a national security secret or protected for privacy reasons, significant amounts of data will be released to the public, the Ministry of Security and Public Administration said. 

The Government 3.0 Plan was one of Park’s key campaign pledges along with the promise of a “creative economy” and a boosting of the overall employment rate to 70 percent from 60.4 percent as of May. 

Park promised to shift the paradigm of how the government operates to put the general public first. The pledge was criticized during the campaign for being vague.

Nearly four months into her presidency, the ministry has unveiled the specifics of Government 3.0.