"Raise Integrity!" Special Order... Emergency for Integrity Improvement in Seoul Autonomous Districts

Following the National Rights Commission's announcement of the comprehensive integrity evaluation for metropolitan, basic, and public institutions nationwide, Seoul autonomous districts with decreased integrity scores launch anonymous survey among all employees to identify causes

Each autonomous district in Seoul is on high alert to improve integrity.

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission recently announced the comprehensive integrity ratings for autonomous districts including cities, counties, and districts nationwide, as well as central government and government-invested institutions.

Accordingly, elected Seoul district mayors are showing very sensitive reactions to the integrity results.

Autonomous districts that received higher integrity grades than last year are actively promoting this, while those with lower integrity scores are identifying causes and preparing countermeasures.

In this survey, among Seoul’s autonomous districts, Gwangjin-gu, Guro-gu, and Gangnam-gu received first-grade ratings, issued press releases, and actively promoted measures to improve integrity over the past year.

In particular, Gwangjin-gu (Mayor Kim Kyung-ho) attracted attention by rapidly improving from a 5th-grade integrity rating during the 7th elected term to 2nd grade last year after Mayor Kim Kyung-ho took office, and now achieving 1st grade. Gangnam-gu (Mayor Cho Sung-myung) also improved by two grades in one year, gaining recognition for its efforts to enhance integrity. Nowon-gu was rated 3rd grade but improved by two grades within a year, showing tremendous effort.

However, Dobong-gu, Dongdaemun-gu, and Mapo-gu, three autonomous districts in Seoul, recorded the lowest rating of 4th grade, drawing attention to the causes.

Accordingly, these districts have begun identifying the reasons for the decline in integrity.

An official from one district said, “We are preparing a survey to understand complaints from employees in order to identify why the integrity rating dropped.”

The comprehensive integrity survey is determined by combining perceived integrity and integrity effort scores, conducted through telephone and email opinion polls of internal employees and external residents.

Therefore, if employees and residents have complaints about the district office’s executive branch, poor results are expected. Especially when employee dissatisfaction is high, perceived integrity tends to be low, resulting in a lower overall integrity rating. Consequently, it has become a common belief that public institution integrity ratings essentially reflect internal employee dissatisfaction surveys.

Another district official stated, “In Seoul’s autonomous districts, administrative staff belonging to the district office and technical public officials belonging to Seoul City work together, and if technical officials have many complaints about working conditions, the integrity rating can be low.”

One Seoul district, which received the lowest rating last year, is known to have conducted a dissatisfaction survey among all employees and responded based on the results.

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