Ministry of Health and Welfare Resolves Barriers in 'Social Security Statistics'

The removal of barriers in social security statistics is achieved through the establishment of an intergovernmental shared data platform.

On the 12th, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that the Social Security Committee has prepared a "Social Security Statistics Improvement Plan" to be implemented over the next four years to strengthen the analysis and utilization of social security statistics in social policy. Until now, social security statistics of each ministry have been managed separately by individual ministries and project units, with information on social security beneficiaries' applications, rejections, and benefits segmented by system. This has limited the in-depth analysis and assessment of policy conditions and their effects.

The government is advancing the national agenda of "producing and enhancing the utilization of social security statistical indicators to support the design and operation of social security policies based on objective evidence."

The Ministry of Health and Welfare is revising the "Framework Act on Social Security" and linking data, which have been dispersed by ministry and system, at the individual level to build a "Comprehensive Social Security Data" as national big data. The comprehensive social security data extracts a sample representing 20% of the entire population (about 10 million people) and combines pseudonymized administrative data from 33 institutions at the individual level to support diverse and multidimensional analysis.

This improvement plan aims to eliminate the barriers in social security administrative data, enhance quality, and progressively improve the production of social security statistics and indicators as well as the policy utilization of existing social security statistics by 2027.

The main tasks include ▲ improving the method of calculating Korea's social welfare expenditure ▲ enhancing policy analysis and utilization through quality verification of social security administrative data by a consortium of national research institutes (social policy cooperation network) ▲ establishing an indicator system and developing new statistical indicators to evaluate the "quality of society" centered on the nation, regions, and communities ▲ and building an intergovernmental shared data platform through cooperation among the Social Security Committee, Ministry of Education, Statistics Korea, and others.

Lee Sang-won, Secretary General of the Social Security Committee at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, stated, "We will support policymakers in designing social security policies that resonate strongly with the public by providing objective data analysis and statistical information."

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