Government R&D Budget Review Led by AI with Upstage Participation

Expert Committee Members Report Improved Work Efficiency
"We Will Further Develop Review Support Functions"

Artificial intelligence (AI) will now participate in the government's review process for research and development (R&D) budgets. The government has decided to leverage an AI model currently being developed through the independent foundation model (Dokpamo) project.

Baek Kyung-hoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, is attending the Science and Technology Ministers' Meeting held at the Government Complex Seoul in Jongno-gu, Seoul on April 30, 2026. Photo by Jo Yongjun

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced at a press briefing held at the Government Sejong Convention Center on May 14, 2026, that it has introduced a "budget review-specialized AI" utilizing the Upstage Solar Open model for national R&D starting this year.

Baek Kang-hoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, proposed the use of AI in the R&D budget review process after taking office last year. This suggestion came in response to ongoing concerns about the heavy administrative workload faced by the 166 expert committee members and budget review staff under the 10 technology sectors of the National Science and Technology Advisory Council's Operations Committee, who review the national R&D project plans for the following year every May and June. These burdens include summarizing meeting minutes and drafting review reports. Park Sang-min, Director of R&D Budget Management at the Ministry, explained, "The expert committee members and staff are under significant time pressure as they need to review many projects within a limited timeframe."

The Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), and Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) collaborated to develop this specialized AI. The decision to use the Upstage Solar Open model was made because it is lightweight, which is suitable given the limited resources. The model has been trained on data accumulated over the past five years, including budget requests, planning reports, and expert review documents from national R&D projects. In addition, it has been integrated with 12.43 million research output records and APIs from the National Science and Technology Information Service (NTIS).

During the demonstration of the specialized AI on this day, the system verified recent government investment directions and projects through chat-based interactions. When asked to find projects similar to those under review, the AI provided several examples and assessed the degree of similarity. For the Ministry of Health and Welfare's newly submitted Phase 2 patient-centered medical technology optimization research project, the AI model provided comparative data between past and current project scales.

Expert committee members reported improved work efficiency, including reduced review times, thanks to AI adoption. Lim Tae-beom, an expert committee member, said, "Last year, I ended up returning to my accommodation as late as 2 a.m. after reviews, but with AI the process was much faster. If functions for analyzing the logic of review opinions are added, it will be possible to produce even more meaningful review reports." Another expert member, Lim Jae-hyuk, explained, "When taking on new projects, I can now quickly draft a first version."

The specialized AI model is a closed system that has passed security verification by the National Intelligence Service. The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to use the introduction of this AI model as a starting point to support a paperless budget review environment and optimize the national R&D investment portfolio. Deputy Prime Minister Baek stated, "Starting with this year's pilot program, we will continue to enhance support functions for the review process. In the future, we will develop systems to enable each ministry to utilize specialized AI throughout the entire process of planning R&D projects and submitting budget requests."

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