SME Big Data Platform Launches

Minister Lee Young, Ministry of SMEs and Startups [Photo by Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Donghyun Choi] The government is establishing a 'Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Big Data Platform' to develop SME support policies based on data. Additionally, qualitative evaluation methods will be added alongside the existing quantitative evaluation methods for assessing the performance of SME support projects.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced on the 31st that it held the 'SME Policy Deliberation Committee' meeting containing these details. At this meeting, four agenda items were discussed and finalized, including the 'SME Big Data Construction and Utilization Plan,' '2022 SME Support Project Evaluation and Improvement Directions,' and '2022 SME Support Project Preliminary Consultation Results.'

Kickoff for Building the 'SME Big Data Platform'

The 'SME Big Data Construction and Utilization Plan' is part of the 'SME Big Data Platform' announced by the government on the 3rd of this month. Until now, individual government ministries have accumulated and partially utilized data separately, but utilization has been insufficient due to siloed data between ministries, and the private sector also faced difficulties in using public data.

The new government plans to fully open public data blocked by inter-ministerial silos and provide customized one-click services. The 'SME Big Data Construction and Utilization Plan' discussed on this day is significant as it represents a concrete plan prepared jointly by related ministries to build an SME Big Data Platform that enables data-driven SME support policies.

The government intends to expand data collection items by ministry through future amendments to the 'Framework Act on Small and Medium Enterprises,' creating a system that can collect data on all SME support projects.

To systematically manage data individually managed by each ministry, the government will build an automatic data linkage system between systems and improve the system by providing feedback when data errors occur.

Accessibility to big data will also be enhanced so that SMEs can easily utilize big data-based services.

Furthermore, to enable SMEs to respond quickly to crisis situations, various statistics such as monthly sales information by industry and region and inter-company transaction indicators will be supported and data will be opened to promote the use of SME big data.

Last Year's Evaluation of 'SME Support Projects'... Introduction of Qualitative Evaluation

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups conducts annual performance evaluations of SME support projects across all ministries to improve fiscal efficiency.

This year's evaluation targeted projects with budgets of 5 billion KRW or more (based on 2021) managed in the SME Integrated Management System, evaluating a total of 137 projects (12 ministries, 23 trillion KRW).

In particular, this evaluation introduced qualitative evaluation for the first time to complement the limitations of the previously uniform quantitative evaluation. A professional evaluation team was also formed to reflect the unique characteristics and policy importance of each ministry's SME support projects. The evaluated projects were classified into eight categories based on support purpose, method, and target, and graded in three stages based on qualitative evaluation (60 points) and quantitative evaluation (40 points).

As a result of the evaluation, projects that quickly responded to current issues such as protecting small business owners suffering from COVID-19, developing promising and core technologies, improving working environments, and cooperation between large corporations and startups received favorable evaluations. The evaluation results will be provided to the relevant ministries and fiscal authorities to be used for next year's budget adjustments and system improvements.

Additionally, the evaluation suggested improvement directions to shift SME projects from support focused on survival to promoting competitiveness, corporate innovative growth, and performance creation. Evaluation indicators will be revised to reflect the innovative growth and performance of supported companies, and the evaluation target will be expanded to all SME support projects.

Preliminary Consultations on 134 Support Projects from 15 Ministries in the First Half of This Year

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups operates a preliminary consultation system to prevent duplication among newly established or modified support projects across ministries and to promote efficient budget execution. It comprehensively reviews ▲similarity and duplication among projects ▲project suitability ▲project feasibility.

In the first half of this year, preliminary consultations were conducted on 134 newly established or modified support projects from 15 central ministries. Among these, 37 projects with similarities or duplications, such as research equipment voucher projects and technology protection projects, were reviewed by experts and coordinated between ministries to resolve duplications and adjust to link support to other projects.

The results of the preliminary consultations are notified to the relevant central ministries for use in future budget formulation and system improvements. Additionally, implementation checks on consultation results will be strengthened to ensure the effectiveness of the system.

Minister Lee Young of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups emphasized, "It is expected that difficulties for SMEs will increase due to recent interest rate hikes, rising prices, damage to small business owners, and deepening polarization between large and small-medium enterprises. To support the full recovery and leap of small business owners and self-employed persons and the innovative growth of SMEs, the government will effectively integrate and link various policies and create a country where SMEs and startups stand at the center of the economy."

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