'Gwangju's Star Policy That Shined' Chosen Directly by Citizens

City to Host '2024 Star Policy Competition' at City Hall on the 5th
330 Citizens and Expert Panel Select 'Top 10 Policies'
Candidates Include Complex Shopping Mall, Late-Night Children's Hospital, and AI Representative City

Poster for the '2024 Star Policy Competition that Shined Gwangju,' scheduled to be held on the 5th at the City Hall Grand Conference Room. Provided by Gwangju City

This year, an event will be held where citizens of Gwangju directly select the city’s ‘Best 10 Policies.’

According to Gwangju City on the 2nd, the ‘2024 Star Policy Competition that Shined Gwangju’ will be held on the 5th at the city hall’s main conference room.

The ‘Star Policy Competition,’ held for the second time this year, was conducted over eight months from April to November to address the shortcomings of previous one-time evaluations of excellent policies. The evaluation method was also changed from being expert and official-centered to citizen-centered.

The candidate policies include ▲‘Gwangju Complex Shopping Mall, Now It’s Possible,’ which will serve as a lever driving regional development ▲‘24/7 Public Midnight Children’s Hospital,’ the nation’s first child-safe medical system ▲‘National AI Data Center Service as a Representative AI City Attracting Companies,’ which is creating the first AI ecosystem outside the metropolitan area centered on an AI-specialized data center.

The competition will be evaluated on-site using electronic voting machines immediately after the presentation of 15 candidate policies, with 300 citizen evaluators and 30 expert evaluators in attendance. The final scores will be calculated with a ratio of 30% pre-evaluation, 40% citizen evaluators, and 30% expert evaluators to select the ‘Best 10 Policies of the Year.’

Earlier, in March, the city internally reviewed 224 major projects and 176 pledge projects of the 8th local government administration and selected 52 candidate policies in five major areas: ▲Industry & Economy ▲Culture, Tourism & Sports ▲Welfare, Care & Inclusion ▲Safety & Transportation ▲Environment, Youth & Education.

In April, from the 52 candidate policies, 30 most anticipated policies were selected through ‘Gwangju On,’ an online citizen plaza, and surveys of officials from Gwangju City and five autonomous districts.

On May 25, during the ‘Citizen’s Day’ event, a ‘Policy Evaluation Expo’ was held for the 30 major projects. Policy booths were set up to provide an overview of the progress of each project, where officials directly explained the projects to citizens and conducted on-site evaluations. A total of 2,078 citizens participated in the policy evaluation.

From September to November, evaluations by community leaders were conducted through surveys targeting heads of neighborhoods, resident autonomy committees, and businesspeople in the five autonomous districts, with 4,701 participants. Combining the votes for each policy since April, 15 projects were finally confirmed as candidates for the ‘Best 10 Policies of the Year’ from the 30 candidate projects.

Lee Byung-chul, Director of Planning and Coordination, said, “We await the citizens’ impartial evaluation to see which policies will become Gwangju’s ‘Best 10’ that shined this year. Through this event, we plan to accelerate policy development and implementation reflecting citizens’ opinions.”

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