Statistics Korea Establishes 'Tongsag Deungnokbu'... Promotes Legal Revision

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] The Statistics Korea is promoting the establishment of a 'Statistical Register' that gathers data scattered across various ministries into one place.

According to Statistics Korea on the 19th, they are currently consulting with the Ministry of Economy and Finance on the detailed contents to submit a revision bill of the Statistics Act, which includes the legal basis for introducing the Statistical Register, to the National Assembly next month.

The Statistical Register refers to an integrated database that collects various information about individuals, companies, and others necessary for compiling statistics.

The purpose of introducing the Statistical Register is to create statistics that can accurately analyze the living conditions of the entire population.

To achieve this, broad utilization of administrative data is required; however, administrative data such as population, assets, employment, and income are scattered across each ministry, and the process of acquiring and sharing these data for statistical purposes is not smooth, which poses a problem.

The controversy over universal and selective disaster relief payments due to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) also stemmed from the inability to accurately grasp citizens' income when necessary information was scattered across ministries.

At the National Assembly audit on the 14th, Statistics Korea Commissioner Kang Shin-wook emphasized the need for legal revision in response to a question from Democratic Party lawmaker Kwangjae Lee, stating, "It was difficult to distinguish the bottom 70% (income-wise) with recent data," and "Even counting the support obligation criteria for basic livelihood security recipients makes it hard to easily identify them."

Once the law is revised, data related to low-income groups held by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and data related to high-income groups held by the National Tax Service can be collected into the Statistical Register at any time, enabling real-time understanding of citizens' accurate income status.

Based on this, it will be possible not only to identify and intensively support the groups most severely affected economically but also to evaluate the effectiveness of policies.

In addition, the revision bill is expected to include the legal basis for establishing a data platform called the 'Statistical Data Center,' which allows the linkage and fusion of statistical and private data for use, as well as the basis to recommend standardization of units when each administrative agency creates administrative data.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.