Gyeongnam Province Launches 'Organizational Diet'... "No Increase in Civil Servants, Focus on Strengthening Substance"

Annual Implementation of Reassignment Target Management System

Reduction of 110 Personnel Over at Least 4 Years

Gyeongnam Provincial Government. / Photo by Se-ryeong Lee ryeong@

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Lee Seryeong] Gyeongsangnam-do announced on the 22nd that it will not increase the number of public officials during the 8th term of the elected government.

According to Gyeongnam Province, the current staff count is 2,752 excluding 4,373 firefighters.

The province decided not to increase new personnel needed for local issues, except for new personnel uniformly allocated to nationwide local government common projects such as infectious disease prevention and disaster management, which are national policy demands.

Through an organizational diagnosis of inefficiencies in organizations and personnel, similar and overlapping functions will be adjusted or consolidated, and the reassigned personnel will be filled through a large-scale "organizational trimming" effort.

To this end, the province will implement a "reassignment target management system" by office, bureau, agency, and department, setting personnel and function reassignment goals according to the conditions of each local government.

Each year, after setting reassignment targets and prioritizing the identification of personnel that can be reduced, the personnel will be reassigned to new demands such as field services for public safety and core national and provincial tasks, and will be systematically managed to prepare for medium- to long-term personnel demands.

Gyeongnam Province has set a goal to reduce 28 personnel annually, which is 1% of the total staff, and 110 personnel over four years across the entire province.

According to the province, as of June 30 this year, the number of provincial public officials is 7,103, which is 1,389 fewer than Busan City with a similar population, and similar to Gangwon-do, which has more than twice the difference.

The number of residents per public official is 464, maintaining the third lowest number of public officials compared to other cities and provinces, following Gyeonggi-do with 848 and Seoul with 496.

On August 4, in connection with the launch of the 8th term of the elected government, the province focused on "economic recovery and job creation," consolidating one bureau and nine divisions of the main office and reallocating 83 personnel to new demands in the fields of jobs, investment, startups, youth, tourism, and safety.

By October, the province plans to conduct self-diagnosis of the main office, affiliated agencies, and business offices, as well as joint public-private organizational diagnosis, comprehensively reviewing the appropriateness of function allocation, personnel operation efficiency, and suitability of organizational establishment to improve personnel efficiency.

To this end, the province plans to boldly reorganize four functional decline areas: fields for introducing the latest technology, reduction areas due to changes in the administrative environment, areas for establishing separate organizations, and other areas with decreased administrative demand.

The organization will be redesigned into areas strengthening frontline public services, areas with rapidly increasing workloads, and new and core areas to enhance productivity.

Ha Jongmok, Director of Planning and Coordination Office, said, "We will do our best to solidify organizational analysis and diagnosis in the second half of the year for an innovative transformation into a task-centered, high-performing organization during the 8th term of the elected government and for efficient organizational management."

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