Public Procurement Service Organizational Restructuring: Promoting Innovative Procurement and Building Next-Generation Nara Market

Establishment of the 'Innovation Procurement Planning Officer' and the 'Next-Generation Nara Market Construction Promotion Team'

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Public Procurement Service announced on the 28th that they have reorganized the Public Procurement Service to activate innovation-oriented public procurement and to fully promote the next-generation Nara Market construction project.

The core of this reorganization is the establishment of the ‘Innovation Procurement Planning Officer’ dedicated to innovation procurement and the ‘Next-Generation Nara Market Construction Promotion Team’ for building the new Nara Market. The partial amendment ordinance of the ‘Public Procurement Service and its affiliated institutions organization regulations’ for the reorganization was approved at the Cabinet meeting on the 22nd and will be implemented from the 29th.

First, as the scale of innovation procurement tasks carried out by one division (Innovation Procurement Division) of the Public Procurement Service has expanded and the need to spread achievements has increased, the ‘Innovation Procurement Planning Officer (Senior Civil Service Grade B)’ and the ‘Innovation Procurement Operations Division’ were added. Innovation procurement is a strategic procurement project that designates products with high ‘technological innovation’ and ‘public service improvement effects’ as innovative products, and the government and public institutions become the first buyers to use innovative products challengingly. Since 2019, the government has been focusing on this policy to promote innovation growth.

In addition, to rebuild Nara Market, which is used by 480,000 procurement companies and about 60,000 demand institutions with an annual transaction volume of 113 trillion won, into an intelligent electronic procurement platform based on new technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, the ‘Next-Generation Nara Market Construction Promotion Team’ will be operated. The integration of the electronic procurement systems independently operated by 26 public institutions into the next-generation Nara Market will also be carried out simultaneously.

Kim Jung-woo, Administrator of the Public Procurement Service, said, “This reorganization will greatly help accelerate innovation procurement and maintain Korea’s world-class electronic procurement’s super-gap status,” adding, “We will carry out procurement administration that breathes with the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the digital transformation era.”

Han Chang-seop, Director of Government Innovation Organization at the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, said, “Innovation procurement and the next-generation Nara Market construction are representative cases of government innovation aimed at providing better administrative services to the public and companies,” and added, “We expect this Public Procurement Service reorganization to be a great help to citizens’ lives and corporate activities.”

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