13 Regulatory Reform Ideas Selected, Discovered and Proposed Directly by Seoul Citizens

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] On the 16th, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that it had selected 13 outstanding projects through a regulatory reform idea contest conducted to identify and improve unreasonable regulations experienced by citizens in daily life and workplaces together with them.

A total of 118 ideas were submitted during the contest held from September 1 to 25, and the winners were decided through the review of the Regulatory Reform Committee.

The grand prize-winning project, "Flexible Operation of Pedestrian Crossing Time," was proposed based on the difficulty elderly pedestrians face in crossing pedestrian crossings within the set time due to uniform pedestrian crossing times. The project suggested flexibly operating pedestrian crossing times. It was evaluated as a project that can contribute to the convenience of elderly pedestrians and the prevention of traffic accidents by installing pedestrian detection floor sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) cameras at pedestrian crossings to analyze user statistics by day and time.

The project selected for the excellence award, "East-West-South BOOK? Seoul Metropolitan City Library Membership Management Integration Proposal," aimed to reduce user inconvenience and cost waste caused by issuing additional membership cards by integrating membership cards for public libraries of a certain scale with high usage.

The project "Guaranteeing Equal Rights to Use Personal Communications such as Mobile Phones for Children Leaving Protective Care" addressed the issue where children leaving child welfare facilities at the age of 18 cannot open mobile phone accounts due to being minors, leading to problems such as identity theft, and proposed improvements.

Other suggestions included mandating the installation of devices that can block ID theft in unmanned youth harmful establishments, installing automated external defibrillator (AED) cabinets in publicly accessible places such as building entrances to allow use during late-night hours or holidays in emergencies, and measures to prevent emergency disaster messages related to COVID-19 from interfering with the functions of other applications on smartphones.

Seoul plans to award the Seoul Mayor’s Prize and prize money to the 13 winners selected as outstanding projects, including these, and actively recommend the improvement of laws and systems related to the selected outstanding projects to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and relevant government departments.

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