Local Governments, Industry-Academia-Research Collaboration Launch Objective and Comprehensive Evaluation of 'K-Quarantine'

Experts, Civic Groups, and the Association of City, County, and District Mayors to Announce Specific Plans in March

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] A joint evaluation involving the private sector, local governments, and academia-industry-research institutions is underway to assess the effectiveness of the ‘K-Quarantine’ system, which has been praised for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This initiative is attracting attention as a potential opportunity to upgrade K-Quarantine through objective diagnosis, performance evaluation, alternative exploration, and improvements, rather than one-sided government promotion.

According to experts on the 25th, organizations such as the Korean Local Autonomy Association, the National Council of Mayors, County Governors, and District Heads, and the World Korean Trade Association plan to form a ‘K-Quarantine and Cloud System Private Expert Evaluation Team’ (tentative name) next month to comprehensively and objectively evaluate the achievements of K-Quarantine. After about two months of in-depth evaluation, the results will be announced on June 1, coinciding with the third anniversary of the launch of the 7th local government administration. Specific criteria and methods will be announced around March. The main evaluation targets include confirmed cases and death statistics from each local government, as well as citizen-friendly exemplary cases of K-Quarantine implementation.

An official from the evaluation team stated, "While we plan to assess and encourage achievements, we will also sound an alarm on complacent areas," adding, "The evaluation will be conducted with the purpose of enhancing crisis management capabilities through accurate diagnosis and alternative exploration, rather than one-sided promotional assessments."

In particular, a comprehensive evaluation will be conducted on the status of non-face-to-face education efforts to prevent COVID-19 spread, as well as the reform achievements of eco-friendly school space systems based on cloud PC platforms, which are being promoted by frontline education offices. In this regard, the government expanded the target for cloud adoption from the existing 467 public institutions to about 1,960, including central government departments, public institutions, and local governments, following last year’s ‘Cloud Transformation Declaration.’

The government plans to transition 83% of administrative and public institution information systems, excluding some systems, to public or private clouds by 2025. To this end, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety has prepared a basic plan to activate cloud computing and decided to expand the target scope beyond public institutions to include central government departments and local governments. In the past, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety also provided sufficient incentives by adding cloud-related criteria to government performance evaluations of public institutions. The Ministry of Science and ICT is also promoting the expansion of cloud usage in public institutions by providing incentives to those using private clouds in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

Since last year, the Ministry of Education has also been transitioning to cloud systems to prevent and curb COVID-19 spread and to innovate school spaces. Cloud-based next-generation computer lab construction projects are being promoted mainly by the Busan Metropolitan Office of Education (with about 243 schools completed and 73 additional schools scheduled for introduction in March), Gyeongnam Provincial Office of Education (all 758 schools completed, including 10 newly established schools this year), and pilot operations in about 50 schools in Gyeongbuk, Ulsan, and Chungbuk Offices of Education.

However, due to the third major wave of the COVID-19 virus, face-to-face education at frontline schools has been completely suspended since November last year, causing the cloud transition projects to come to a halt. An education expert on the front lines said, "Many are eager for the rapid expansion of cloud-based computer lab environment improvement projects ahead of this year’s school opening," pointing out that "these projects have achieved significant results in preventing COVID-19 spread and providing high-quality software education through groundbreaking improvements in fine dust, noise, heat issues, electromagnetic waves, virus prevention, and budget savings."

He added, "Regrettably, some education offices are still pushing for replacement projects with large desktop PCs or indiscriminately importing foreign PCs that do not fit Korea’s education information systems, leading to repeated trial and error and budget waste," and noted, "Since the government recently announced that the transition to cloud systems will be an important criterion in public institution evaluations, there is hope that such realities will improve."

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