President Jun Sung-bae of the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) explains IITP’s management policies at a meeting with reporters at the Korea Press Center in downtown Seoul on March 25. (Photos: IITP)

“The Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) will implement ICT R&D and manpower development and manage all cycles so that R&D policies can lead into real outcomes,” said IITP President Jun Sung-bae while announcing major business plans for the year 2021 at a meeting with reporters at Korea Press Center in downtown Seoul on March 25.

IITP was established in 2014 with the goal of promoting ICT technologies and related industries through R&D support. President Jun, which took office this year, will take the helm of IITP for three years.

IITP’s budget for the year, revealed by President Jun, stands at 1.389.9 trillion won, an 11.6 percent jump over last year, when 1.228.5 trillion won was set aside. IITP is ramping up support for the development of core technologies to secure innovative growth engines.

The institution has set aside 139.1 billion won to support R&D for realizing Digital New Deal projects such as super-performance, super-band networks, non-face-to-face remotely controlled collaboration platforms and AI-enabled chip designs.

IITP is doubling down on high-risk, challenging R&D activities designed to accumulate mid- and long-term technologies and secure leading technologies, such as 6G, self-driving and blockchain.

The R&D budget allocation for the segment stood at 87.2 billion won last year. New investments for the segment have surged more than 50 percent, to 133.6 billion won this year.

IITP has allotted 74.3 billion won to explore mid- and long-term research tasks, such as next-generation database management systems and causal inference-based knowledge technologies.

It has also set aside 15.8 billion for R&D budget for carbon neutrality such as smart energy for convergence services between ICT and industries and high-efficiency, low-loss technologies.

The institution is working on the planning of large-sized new businesses in strategic areas to cope with future technology changes and nurture convergence industries.

It is conducting a feasibility study on four projects, including core technologies of processing-in-memory (PIM) AI chips, proprietary core technologies of next-generation AI, and communication technologies based on the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication network.

IITP plans to build research infrastructure for testing and verifying terminals, equipment and devices to cope with corporate technology changes such as data, network and AI technologies, as well as 5G convergence services.

To this end, the institution has set aside 9 billion won to build infrastructure for ICT innovation and leading research, 9.2 billion won for super-connectivity intelligent development network, and 13.1 billion won for a test bed for 5G convergence services based on network slicing.

An R&D management regime will be overhauled in an open and autonomous fashion. Qualitative levels of an evaluation committee will be upgraded through steps such as a real-name evaluation system.

Evaluations will be tailored to meet the current situation of evaluation and R&D.

IITP plans to ramp up R&D money management through prior preventive education and consulting. Research leaders will undergo self-diagnosis tests on how to use R&D outlays as part of efforts to ramp up R&D money management.

A view of IITP headquarters in Daejeon.