[2021 National Audit] Hong Seok-jun "Poor Operation of Data Dam... Inefficient Collection and Lack of Control Tower"

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[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] Various issues have been pointed out regarding the government’s flagship Digital New Deal project, ‘Data Dam,’ including inefficient supplier-centered data collection, inadequate quality management of data, and the absence of a control tower.

At the National Assembly Science, Technology, Information and Communications Committee’s audit on the 1st, Hong Seok-jun, a member of the People Power Party, criticized the government’s Data Dam project for poor management.

Rep. Hong stated, “The current Data Dam indiscriminately collects data from the supplier’s perspective and tells demanders to use it as they see fit,” pointing out the lack of an efficient data utilization collection system as a problem. He emphasized, “The U.S. was able to quickly develop vaccines like Moderna based on accumulated clinical data. It is necessary to identify demand in advance and focus selectively on data collection. To this end, a data collection system tailored to corporate demand must be designed from the data collection process.”

He also criticized the quality of the data. Rep. Hong said, “Many data sets have not been updated for 2 to 3 years, causing startups to complain that they are practically unusable. The core project of Data Dam, ‘AI training data construction,’ involves data labeling of unstructured data performed by short-term part-timers who received only 1 to 2 hours of training, so it is uncertain whether proper verification has been done,” adding, “There are fundamental problems with the accuracy and quality of the data.”

The absence of a control tower was also pointed out as an issue. Rep. Hong said, “Coordination among related organizations such as the National Information Society Agency (NIA) and the Korea Data Agency is necessary,” and emphasized, “It is urgent to establish a Data Integration Support Center that will serve as a control tower to provide integrated support for the entire data industry cycle?from data collection and generation to storage and management, processing and distribution, and analysis and utilization.” The current Basic Act on Intelligent Informatization stipulates that the NIA should establish the Data Integration Support Center, but the center has not yet been set up.

Rep. Hong stressed, “The data industry is a key sector that will determine national competitiveness in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era, and supplying high-quality public data that companies need is important,” adding, “To supply high-quality data with high usability that can be used immediately in the field, it is urgently necessary to establish a demand-centered data collection system through the prompt establishment of the Data Integration Support Center.”

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