Government to Promote Comprehensive Open Data Act for Public Sector

Jung Woo-taek, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Leads Public Data Act Proposal
Currently 78,000 Cases of Land Management and Disaster Safety Data Released
Key Point: Shift to Negative System for Public Data Opening

Legislation to fully open all government public data is being promoted.

On the 7th, Jeong Woo-taek, a member of the National Assembly's Administrative Safety Committee from the People Power Party, officially proposed a revision of the "Act on the Provision and Use of Public Data" to implement the Digital Platform Government and strengthen the public's data usage rights.

Since the enactment of the Public Data Act in 2013, over 78,000 public data sets related to land management, healthcare, disaster safety, culture and tourism, industry and employment, environment and weather have been opened, and based on these, more than 2,700 private services (mobile apps) have been developed and utilized in citizens' daily lives. However, there is still an evaluation that the public data needed by the private sector is insufficient, and the need to supplement the Public Data Act to revitalize the data economy has been raised.

Accordingly, the revision introduces a negative system principle that fully opens all government public data, and includes measures to support easy utilization by citizens and companies.

Specifically, ▲ to expand public data opening, the scope of regulation of the current law limited to the provision and use of public data will be extended to cover the entire lifecycle of public data, ▲ the responsibilities and obligations of public institutions regarding public data policies from the data creation stage to preservation will be strengthened, and ▲ the title of the law will be changed to the "Public Data Act" to encompass the expanded legislative purpose and scope of regulation.

In particular, to prevent the creation of individual laws that block the opening of public data, when enacting or revising laws, ▲ an evaluation system for factors hindering the provision and use of public data will be introduced, and ▲ obligations to build information systems considering public data opening and the basis for a public data quality certification system will be newly established.

Furthermore, ▲ to increase the private sector's utilization of public data, new grounds for actively providing public data such as pseudonymization of data and providing verification information when opening raw data is difficult will be established, and ▲ the basis for expanding public-private cooperation, including opening data jointly created with the private sector, commercialization and startups using public data, and fostering and supporting companies, will be strengthened.

Representative Jeong said, "Data is called the oil of the 21st century and is becoming an increasingly important core resource of the global economy," adding, "As this is a key bill for promoting the data economy and implementing the Yoon Suk-yeol administration's Digital Platform Government, we will ensure it is discussed in the National Assembly and implemented as soon as possible."

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