ACRC Recommended 255 Institutional Improvement Projects to Address Citizen Inconvenience and Unjustness in Everyday Life in Last 5 Years with 98.7% Acceptance Rate of Agencies

- On 22nd, it reported the achievements of institutional improvement to the cabinet meeting, and published and distributed ACRC Casebook of 100 Institutional Improvement Projects –

# “I feel threatened because my ex-husband who is a domestic violence perpetrator can read my information in the resident registration with an excuse that he needs it for alimony.” (September ’20, e-People)

# “Public institutions should recover legal costs for a case they won.”(August ’21, 94.3.% voted yes in the public opinion poll on People’s Idea Box)

On the 22nd, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission released 100 major projects for institutional improvement which were developed reflecting the voice of the people over the past five years since Moon Jae-in government took office and on which the ACRC provided recommendation to tackle citizen inconvenience and injustice in everyday life; and published and shared a casebook with relevant agencies.

The Commission operates diverse digital public communication channels, including e-People, Integrated Government Call Center (110) and People’s Idea Box, and utilizes them in examining and identifying factors that might violate citizen rights and interests or cause corruption for institutional improvement to fundamentally resolve the factors.

The ACRC particularly have focused on realizing an inclusive nation by strengthening the social safety net and addressing injustice in daily life for the past five years of the Moon administration. As a result, we advised relevant agencies to improve on a total of 255 institutions, and the acceptance rate of the recommendation reached 98.7%.

Key examples of institutional improvement for relieving citizen inconvenience include a project where we made the perpetrator in a domestic violence case not to be able to track the address of not only the victim, but also the victim’s parents and children living another residence in order to prevent additional damage.

In a different project, we made it possible for the victim of a school violence incident to be able to take part in a retrial when the violator appealed against a disciplinary action of the school principal by making sure the victim be notified of a retrial and have an opportunity to testify.

We also advised the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to cut real estate commissions by a half as price hikes in the housing market increased the burden on the people’s shoulders in February last year. The Ministry accepted our recommendation and amended relevant regulations in October last year, significantly reducing people’s burden of paying broker fees.

We improved the practice of employers having workers pay for pre-employment health checkup by making the employer bear the cost, and encouraged the employer to refer to the result of the national health screening program instead of conducting pre-employment checkup separately.

Other examples include ▴improvement of purchase and operation support system over electric and hydrogen vehicles by reducing tolls on highways and parking rates in national and public universities, etc., and ▴improvement of meal service for children by stipulating the unit cost for meal service by law to ensure rights to quality meals for all children in every local community.

Key examples of institutional improvement for addressing injustice in everyday life include a project where we made public institutions develop operating regulations for litigation that include detailed plans to recover legal costs in order to improve the practice of wasting public funds in case they leave litigation expenses unrecovered even after winning a case. The change is expected to recover some 100 billion won worth of legal costs a year.

We also made relevant government agencies not to execute budget for domestic and abroad training programs for public officials who served for a long time and are scheduled to retire and their spouses in local governments, and for high-priced gifts such as gold keys, and to remove the basis of such practice from ordinances.

Other examples include ▴improvement of terms and conditions of golf courses to strengthen management and monitoring of green fees at public golf courses who enjoy various tax benefits amounting to 1 trillion won a year, and not to coerce customers to use additional services such as dining or caddie services, ▴prohibition of providing incentives or early voluntary retirement allowances for employees of public service-related organizations in case they are subject to severe disciplinary actions or be imposed sanctions due to receipt of money or entertainment, embezzlement, sexual abuse or harassment or sex trafficking, and drunk driving, and ▴improvement to make students themselves participate in the operation process of student guidance allowances at national and public universities and to ban government employees besides faculty from receiving the allowance, which will save 30 billion won worth of tuition budget.

On the 22nd, the ACRC reported the achievements of institutional improvement to the cabinet meeting where heads of relevant ministries attend, and asked their cooperation in implementation of the Commissions’ recommendation.

At the same time, we selected 100 major projects for institutional improvement where more citizens can relate to and enjoy the benefits of the policy improvement, and published ACRC Casebook of 100 Institutional Improvement Projects. We plan to distribute the casebook to relevant agencies to engage them in practicing proactive public administration and addressing corruption and citizen inconvenience.

The ACRC will also fully manage the implementation of institutional improvement projects recommended to each government agency. We plan to enhance the assessment of implementation over some projects that have been pending for different issues, such as delay in legislation, and to encourage agencies to carry out the projects through periodic implementation strategy meetings and consulting, report to the cabinet meeting, and proposal of legislation so that the change will be reflected in institutions as early as possible.

An ACRC Official commented “with the impacts of Covid-19, the people are suffering more inconvenience and difficulties in their lives. The government is required to be attentive and preemptively take action to ensure citizen rights and interests are not violated.”

An ACRC Official added “the ACRC will continue to listen to the voice of the people through our digital public communication channels such as e-People and People’s Idea Box to constantly work at institutional improvement where citizens can actually benefit from.”