KISDI Basic Research (21-04) Publication of Study on Measures of Promoting Information integration and Sharing in the Public Sector

Discussion on measures of promoting information integration and sharing between government ministries

Survey results of awareness of civil servants on the topic of “an obstacle to information sharing between government ministries”

Indicating the problem of accountability for information sharing, security, and self-interests across ministries

“Despite policy-making is essential through the cooperation between government ministries to respond to digital transformation, civil servants are aware of the problems of poor communication between ministries, work cooperation, and information sharing.

Thus, it is urgently needed to provide measures to enhance collaborative problem-solving capabilities by linking and sharing various information.”

▲ It is necessary to clearly set up the instruction for information sharing and related regulations in government ministries and share information with public officials.

▲ It is necessary to make an effort to raise the level of awareness of the purpose, content, and application of information-sharing-related policies/ activities.

▲ It is the key to providing a clear basis of accountability, which may occur after information sharing, and not imposing unreasonable responsibility for unpredictable situations.

The Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI, President Ho-yeol Kwon) published the report titled the KISDI Basic Research (21-04) “Study on Measures of Promoting Information integration and Sharing in the Public Sector” recently.

The innovation of intelligent information technology and the COVID-19 crisis in our daily lives have accelerated a digital society more rapidly than ever. The complexity and uncertainty of issues that occur throughout the changing society have increased more so than the past, with the importance of collaboration between government ministries to respond to this change coming to the fore. Information sharing is the key issue to promoting the collaboration between government ministries, and the importance of information sharing has been emphasized again in various cross-ministerial plans and the overall national strategy/ policies.

This report contains the process of deriving a measure to promote information sharing between government ministries to cope with the environmental change in public administration according to digital transformation, with its deliverables consisting of policy recommendations for the information sharing advancement.

Next, this report examined information-sharing-related policies and cases of the past between Korean and international government ministries, and identified the issues and problems. After that, a survey was conducted with 1,055 civil servants at central government ministries who have dealt with information in their workplaces to ascertain the awareness and attitudes about information sharing so as to analyze the obstacles and impact factors. In this regard, in-depth surveys were conducted with 20 experts in various areas to listen to the opinions on the policy directions for the advancement of information sharing between government ministries in the future. Finally, this report formulated the policy direction required for the advancement of information integration and sharing between government ministries by summarizing the study results above.

The main study results were given as follows.

The analysis results of impact factors based on the survey conducted with civil servants at central government ministries revealed that the activity of sharing information in the course of performing work consisted of a complex operation of highly complicated factors. Notably, the legal and institutional system as perceived by respondents showed significant interactive effects with some factors (technology easiness, characteristics of ministry tasks, information sharing cost, etc.) that influenced the propensity to use information sharing at work, which is in line with the fact that legal and institutional systems should be reformed continuously.

As for the impact factors of information sharing promotion, the benefits of information sharing recognized by the respondents had a statistically significant impact on the importance and needs, whereas the influence of information sharing on the propensity to use was regarded as a perceived cost, which is the risk factor, in terms of benefits and costs. These results imply that it is necessary to lower the concern rather than increase expectations of the benefits in order to incentivize civil servants to share information during work.

Next, the survey response to the hindering factors of information sharing exhibited that civil servants agreed with what are the most hindering factors proposed in this study. First of all, the survey result confirmed that individual civil servants felt more anxiety and concern as to individual responsibility. Although new laws are enacted and existing regulations concerning information sharing are revised, civil servants still felt the anxiety as to information sharing in the current legal system. This infers that the responsibility of information sharing is on the individual civil servants and there is a fundamental problem that lacks the safety mechanism for proactive administration of civil servants. Notably, unclear about where the responsibility lies for information sharing, obstacles in security aspects and responsibility for misuse or negative results after information sharing from an institutionalization perspective are regarded as hindering factors that can be solved at any time if a clear safety mechanism is put in place for civil servants with respect to information sharing.

In addition, internal problems of public institutions that have been discussed in the past are pointed out as hindering factors of information sharing in the present as well. Among the obstacles in the organizational aspect, the problems of inter-institution collaboration and conflicts of interest are regarded as hindering factors that is still discussed continuously, which is referred to as the “egoism among government ministries” or the “administration with a lack of communication”. To solve this problem, more active efforts are needed at the administration level. If the perception level of hindering factors is lower, the problem of trust in the information of other institutions or the reliability between public institutions will be naturally solved.

Finally, the report proposed measures to promote information sharing between government ministries by dividing them into the following categories given: ▲Common, ▲law and system, ▲finance, ▲organization, ▲technology, ▲security, and ▲human factor after summarizing the review of policies and cases, surveys on the attitude and perception of central government civil servants, and in-depth survey results with experts.

Jung-wook Moon, the head of the Center said the basis of the implementation of a digital platform-based government, which is actively pursued and publicized as part of the key national tasks of the new government, is the advancement of information and data sharing between government ministries. Thus, it is foremost necessary to make policy efforts multi-dimensionally for the advancement of information sharing in the public sector first to implement the digital platform government successfully.