"‘Resetting Public Procurement Regulations’ Comprehensive Review of Procurement Rules and Systems from the Ground Up"

The Public Procurement Service (PPS) is undertaking a comprehensive review from the ground up on whether to maintain procurement regulations and systems, in an initiative called the ‘Public Procurement Regulation Reset.’

On the 13th, the PPS announced that it will conduct a full survey of over 760 regulations and guidelines (more than 16,600 clauses) and major systems. Following demand surveys for regulatory improvements through meetings, briefings, and opinion gathering, the regulation reset will reflect the field demands of companies, associations, and demand institutions.

This approach differs from the existing method, which improved regulations individually based on field opinions. The PPS will also operate a dedicated organization for the regulation reset. This dedicated team, the Regulation Reset Task Force (TF), consists of the Planning and Coordination Officer and heads of major system departments, and began activities on the 12th.

Through the Regulation Reset TF, the PPS plans to conduct a full survey of all regulations, from key core regulations such as Multiple Award Schedule (MAS), Excellent Products, Innovative Products, IT Contracts, and Facility Construction Contracts, to general regulations and guidelines, verifying the validity and appropriateness of each regulation.

The actual retention of regulations will be finally reviewed and decided by a public-private joint Regulatory Innovation Committee, which includes public procurement demanders and experts. The committee is chaired by the PPS Administrator and includes 10 external members.

During this process, if the necessity for retention is not proven, the regulation will be either ‘relaxed’ or ‘abolished.’ Even for regulations decided to be retained, the PPS emphasized that a permanent reset system will be established to periodically re-examine their validity and appropriateness.

The initial full survey will classify all 760 regulations by clause necessity, individually identifying whether each clause constitutes a regulation, thereby re-examining even hidden regulations at the clause level from the ground up. The re-examination will be conducted concurrently by the Regulation Reset TF and the responsible departments.

In particular, core systems will involve external experts from the review stage, and the final decision will be entrusted to the committee to strengthen the verification of the necessity for regulation retention.

The PPS will also establish a ‘permanent regulation reset system’ to periodically re-examine regulations. Codes will be assigned according to regulatory characteristics at the article, clause, and subclause levels to accumulate and manage a database, and a self-review deadline will be set so that regulations approved for retention can also undergo periodic re-examination.

Im Gi-geun, Administrator of the PPS, said, “The PPS will strive to realize ‘livelihood procurement’ that reduces the burden on companies as a ‘friend’ of small, venture, and innovative enterprises.” He added, “The regulation reset will be an important policy tool for realizing livelihood procurement, serving as a cornerstone for innovative regulatory reform that eliminates unreasonable regulations and improves and develops necessary ones.”

Meanwhile, the PPS achieved results last year by discovering and improving 102 regulations, including reducing the scope of stamp tax imposition requested from the field, easing the corporate burden by about 98 billion KRW annually.

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