[Brief] ACRC Is Committed to Resolve 20 Million Civil Complaints Yearly Filed with the Commission

 

Fellow Citizens,

 

As the government agency that is tasked with dealing with civil complaints, we would like to inform you on the ACRC’s vision and future plans to more effectively and fundamentally resolve people’s grievances that are expected to reach 20 million cases this year.

 

Last year, the ACRC received some 17.5 million civil complaints. To be specifically, 13.3 million cases were filed through e-People, 3.1 cases million via Integrated Government Call Center (110), 450,000 cases through the public policy participation channel on People’s Idea Box, 47,000 cases via the Government Complaints Counseling Center, 20,000 cases through administrative appeals, and 15,000 cases via corruption reports and public interest disclosures.

As the difficulties in people’s livelihoods as well as polarization deepen along with the protracted COVID-19 pandemic, and more people use social media, the number of civil grievances filed on e-People are rapidly increasing. If the number continues on a current trajectory, it is expected to exceed 20 million this year.

 

It is ACRC’s priority to fully resolve some 20 million civil grievances by being responsive toward each and every inconvenience, compliant and inquiry as it directly affects the happiness of our people.

 

We, meanwhile, are fully aware of the inconvenience pointed out by some citizens that the government is not properly responding to the increasing number of civil complaints due to lack of awareness and tepid behavior of public officials toward public grievances, shortage in infrastructure of each public institution at all levels for responsibly tackling the complaints, limitation in the workforce and circumstances in the government, among others.

 

It is necessary to overhaul the civil compliant handling system in order to have the competence to resolve the grievances that meets different demands and heightened expectation of the people as we are approaching the 20 million cases of civil complaints mark per annum.

 

20 million civil complaints are what the ACRC is committed to proactively, responsively tackling as the government agency in charge of resolving them.

First, the ACRC will take the initiative to practically resolve civil complaints.

 

① We will make sure the acceptance rate of ACRC’s recommendation reaches 100%.

 

We operate e-People to relieve the resentment of citizens by thoroughly investigating unlawful and unfair administrative dispositions in an objective and impartial manner before advising the public institution to correct the disposition.

 

Public institution’s acceptance rate of ACRC’s recommendation for correction, intended to redeem people rights and interests, is currently around 96%. We are going to upscale the recommendation and strengthen cooperation with the institutions so that 100% of them would accept the recommendation.

 

② We will proactively respond to resolve collective complaints by enacting Act on Mediation of Collective Complaints in order to settle social conflict.

 

We are going to proactively tackle collective complaints, which are difficult to be handled as they have far-reaching consequences across the society and involve sharp conflicts of interest. Over the last 5 years (from ’17 to ’21), the ACRC realized some 140,000 citizens’ long-awaited demands through the resolution of 479 collective grievances. Major cases we have resolved include: a collective complaint involving the sale of the property without owners located in the civilian control area in Haean-myeon, Yanggu-gun, Gangwon-do; a case about the sale of a Korean Air’s site in Songhyeon-dong; Korean Pharmaceutical Association’s demand for the government to fulfil the promise of the provision of support over the facial mask rationing scheme.

 

We will continue to redeem the rights and interests of individual citizens by proactively tackle collective grievances while preventing social conflict from spreading further. We will also utilize all our capabilities to pass the Act on Mediation of Collective Complaints, which is pending in the National Assembly, as early as possible for efficient and systematic mediation and resolution of collective grievances.

 

③ We will also carry out efforts in making sure no one is left behind in redemption of rights and interests through greater ombudsman cooperation with public institutions at all levels.

 

The ACRC currently runs Police Ombudsman, Military Ombudsman, CIO (Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials) Ombudsman, and SME Ombudsman. In addition, we operate Foreign Enterprises Ombudsman to handle inconveniences and grievances of foreign businesses in Korea. Our key achievements include the resolution of a grievance to prevent the violation of rights and interests of persons interested in the case caused by the unnecessary prolongation of police investigations; and protection of the rights and interests of small and medium-sized enterprise owners. As the government’s Ombudsman, the ACRC will continue to proactively resolve civil complaints in professional fields by enhancing cooperation and concluding more MoUs with relevant government agencies while pushing forward with the introduction of ombudsman programs in major government institutions in authority, such as Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and National Tax Service.

 

④ We will proactively address some 20,000 administrative appeals filed each year with ACRC from the people’s perspective.

 

Administrative appeals are powerful means of redeeming people’s rights and interests that clearly resolve violations of citizens’ rights and interests caused by unlawful and unfair dispositions of administrative agencies, make irrevocable decisions to which the agencies are not able to object, and induce corrective action over the result taken by the institutions themselves.

 

We will proactively judge illegitimate and wrongful dispositions made by administrative agencies from the citizens’ perspective and drastically increase the acceptance rate of general cases in administrative appeals to exceed 30% from the current 19.7% to aggressively relieve inconvenience the people suffer.

 

⑤ We will enhance the competence of ACRC Government Complaints Counseling Center.

 

The Government Complaints Counseling Center, which began operating in October 2019, will continue to provide at-one-go comprehensive counseling service over complex civil complaints involving multiple public institutions. Furthermore, through greater cooperation with professional associations, including those of lawyers, tax accountants and doctors, we are going to significantly upscale the counseling on civil grievances.

 

Second, we will improve different policies and institutions that may lead to civil complaints in an effort to fundamentally reduce grievances.

 

① One of the major roles the ACRC carries out is to improve institutions with citizens by engaging the people.

 

The ACRC not only resolves individual civil complaints, but also identifies issues in policies and institutions that might cause grievances, develops solutions to essentially tackle the issue, and advises public agencies at all levels.

 

② We will listen to the people’s opinions by analyzing the big data in People’s Idea Box and e-People for improving institutions.

 

We examine ideas for policy improvement suggested by citizens via People’s Idea Box, a public policy participation platform, and the big data of civil complaints collected through e-People to identify unreasonable laws and regulations inducing civil complaints. After thorough fact-finding investigation, we devise plans to improve institutions that can fundamentally tackle inconvenience the people suffer, and advise public agencies at all levels. The acceptance rate of ACRC’s recommendation on institutional improvement by public agencies reaches nearly 100%.

 

③ Key examples of institutional improvement

 

Major achievements in institutional improvement made last year are 50% reduction of real estate commissions, improvement of meal service for children from underprivileged families, improvement of operation and management of electric scooters, tactile paving and green vehicles, among others. Thanks to the institutional improvement on real estate commissions, in particular, the number of civil complaints related to the issue dropped by a wide margin to 331 in 2021 from 3,370 between 2019 and 2020.

 

④ Institutional improvement through special fact-finding investigation

 

Meanwhile, in an effort to fundamentally tackle civil complaints, the ACRC reforms policy and institution by analyzing causes and types of grievances raised by many people and in a repetitive manner and conducting special inspection. For example, we examined repetitive grievances related to the school travel safety issue and executed special investigation to ensure safe school travel in areas near schools. We identified improvement opportunities for 1,371 schools across the nation, and developed improvement plans for some 500 walkaways near schools. The project has proceeded more than 50%, and substantially reduced relevant repetitive civil complaints.

 

The ACRC will continue to proactively implement special investigation over repetitive civil complaints, and improve policies based on citizens’ suggestions made via People’s Idea Box, and institutions inducing grievances so that complaints caused by unreasonable policy and institution can essentially decrease.

 

Third, we will increase accountability of public officials in government agencies over resolution of civil complaints, and improve the culture, behavior and awareness in the public office to ensure proactive public administration would apply in dealing with grievances.

 

In resolving 20 million civil complaints, what requires the most is to increase accountability in resolving the complaints of government agencies at all levels who listen to and resolve the grievances on the ground.

 

① We will better redeem rights and interests of residents in local communities by establishing more Local Ombudsmen.

 

The ACRC will obligate the establishment of a Local Ombudsman in local governments that serve 500,000 population or more to tackle the grievances in local communities in a timely and fair manner, and will enhance cooperation with Local Ombudsmen to reinforce the complaint resolution infrastructure.

 

Afterwards, we will pave the way for establishing an Ombudsman in the central administrative agencies, education offices and other public institutions so that each institution can prevent and resolve civil complaints on its own.

② We will promote proactive administration of public officials through ACRC assessments.

 

In addition, we will create a culture in the public office where public officials proactively resolve civil complaints by taking advantage of our Integrity Assessment for Public Institutions and Assessment of Civil Complaint Service. In order to increase the competence of public institutions at all levels, we are going to help create a culture of proactive resolution of grievances in the agencies by reflecting the effort to execute proactive public administration and the practice of passive administration in the criteria of Integrity Assessment for Public Institutions, which evaluates 573 public agencies; and are going to improve Assessment of Civil Complaint Service by expanding the assessment target to include more public institutions.

 

③ We will raise operational quality of Citizen Request for Proactive Public Administration and Passive Public Administration Reporting systems.

 

The ACRC is leading the efforts toward proactive public administration in the public office through Citizen Request for Proactive Public Administration and Referral of Passive Public Administration Reports, which were introduced last year. Any citizen whose civil complaint is rejected or suggestion is not adopted can file a request for proactive public administration with the ACRC, and the Commission reviews the request from the citizens’ perspective to relieve inconvenience the people experience.

 

We also operate a channel to receive reports on passive public administration where we review a referred case that was filed for passive administration of a public official in charge of a civil complaint, but was not properly resolved, and encourage the relevant public institution to proactively make improvement. Between July and December last year, a total of some 1,900 citizen requests for proactive public administration was filed. 110 cases of them have been resolved to be the subject of proactive public administration, and we are working on the remaining cases.

According to relevant proactive public administration laws and regulations, the disposition of public officials made in accordance with ACRC’s recommendation for proactive public administration is immune from disciplinary actions, therefore, the public official in charge of the civil complaint at issue can proactively handle the case at his discretion. Furthermore, in consultation with relevant ministries such as Ministry of Personnel Management, the ACRC will work at plans incentivizing public officials and institutions who voluntarily adopt and work on a citizen request for proactive public administration or readily implement ACRC’s recommendation for proactive public administration in assessing performance, reward and bonus.

 

With Citizen Request for Proactive Public Administration and Referral of Passive Public Administration Reports, the ACRC will continue to be devoted to taking the initiative for resolving inconvenience the people experience in a and aggressive manner.

 

④ We will strengthen integrity education in recognizing that “passive public administration is corruption too.”

 

We will fully take advantage of the integrity education that two million public officials are obliged to complete every year according to the ACRC Act. Given that the passive public administration is corruption in a broad sense, and integrity is a basic requirement for public officials who serve for the people’s happiness; we will create a wide variety of content for integrity education, and implement tailored integrity education to make sure public officials are fully aware of the need for upright and fair execution of duties and proactive public administration.

 

Finally, as we are in the age of digital transformation, we will resolve civil complaints in an innovative manner by building Digital Platform for People’s Rights and Interests.

 

① AI e-People will be the complete form of the Digital Platform for People’s Rights and Interests.

 

We will complete the building of the Digital Platform for People’s Rights and Interests by innovating e-People, which is the government’s representative public communication platform and channel for civil complaints, to be AI e-People equipped with cutting-edge digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), metaverse and cloud computing.

 

② AI e-People will provide timely and customized solution to civil complaints that are repetitive or require simple answers.

 

We will resolve some 2.5 million or 15% of the civil complaints filed with the ACRC that are repetitive or require simple answers in a and accurate manner. We currently have an inconvenient system where simple inquiries or civil complaints similar to others should be closed after officially filed via e-People. However, AI e-People will automatically provide answers to such inquiries or complaints when users type in related keywords before filing a complaint in order to essentially reduce civil grievances. We also are going to provide customized policy concerning civil complaints so that the people can benefit from various public administration services.

 

③ We will engage more partner institutions in e-People.

 

We will increase the number of partner and public institutions joining e-People from the current 1,080 to 2,000, and continue to work on engaging all public institutions in order for citizens to find it more convenient to use the system.

 

④ We will introduce a chatbot to Integrated Government Call Center (110) to dramatically increase the quality of complaint counseling.

 

The ACRC will innovate the current civil complaint counseling system of Integrated Government Call Center (110) by adopting AI and chatbot functions so that it can immediately provide answers on citizens’ inquiries at one go.

 

⑤ We will enhance the functions of analyzing civil complaint big data and predicting grievances.

 

We will go beyond simply analyzing civil complaint data mainly on e-People to capture pending issues in the society by integrating and combining public and private data so that we can respond to grievances in a scientific and preemptive manner. With civil complaint analysis and prediction, we are going to forecast damages and risks the people are likely to encounter, such as the shortage of diesel exhaust fluid and the risk of building collapse, and inform relevant government agencies to ensure the safety of the people and save them from experiencing inconvenience and hazard.

 

⑥ We will push ahead with the enactment of e-People law.

 

In order to complete the building of the Digital Platform for People’s Rights and Interests with functions above, we will expedite the legislation on an e-People law, which was put forth in the National Assembly in January this year, to successfully lay the legal groundwork.

 

As the government agency tasked with the resolution of civil complaints, the ACRC will continue to proactively tackle 20 million grievances we are expected to receive this year, and aggressively enhance systems and institutions to this end.

At the same time, the Commission is going to exercise all its capabilities in improving awareness and behavior of public officials in charge of civil complaints in each public agency so that they can aggressively tackle the grievances for the people by applying proactive public administration, and in improving policies and institutions that might cause civil complaints based on citizen opinions.