Research

What organization, authority and structures of cooperation does a local government need in order to move beyond department-by-department AI adoption and coordinate its administration as a whole? The study asks how citizen contact points, interdepartmental collaboration, technical support and regulatory response can be connected in a single administrative system.

It is a theory-building case study: a thematic analysis of policy documents, prior research and press materials establishes the theoretical framework of the AI administrative hub, which is then mapped onto Wonju's policy cases. Gyeonggi Province and Wenzhou, China serve as supplementary comparisons.

The model consists of four functions: a citizen interface that lets residents reach the services and counseling they need without first knowing how departments are organized; interdepartmental collaboration that links data, programs and decision-making; an AI support function that helps each department use technology through specialist staff, data and training; and a regulatory hub that addresses the legal and institutional issues raised by technology experiments together with safety and trust. Wonju's care and civil-service programs, industry-academia-government cooperation and its digital healthcare special zone are interpreted through this framework.

The study is distinctive in treating AI not as a list of tools but as a matter of local government organization and authority, citizen participation and central-local relations. As a model proposed on the basis of a single case, it also sets out tasks for follow-up research that compares several local governments and examines the experience of citizens and public officials.

How do the priorities of council members, secretariat staff, committee experts and researchers differ when it comes to strengthening local council expertise? Rather than average approval or disapproval, the study explores the structure of preferences: what each group of stakeholders considers relatively more important.

Statements on strengthening expertise were drawn from in-depth interviews with council officials and from prior research; council stakeholders were then asked to sort them (Q sorting), and perception types were derived through factor analysis.

Five perception types emerged. The study interprets the differences along two dimensions: whether the focus is on individual council members or on support organizations, and whether short-term or long-term change is valued. Even where stakeholders agreed on adding staff, they differed on whose expertise should be developed, and how.

The study recommends understanding these differences before designing uniform support measures. It proposes that policy support staff be designed to give real support to council members' work and to oversight of the executive, and, as an exploratory study, notes the need to complement it with population-level surveys.

Even after local councils gained independent personnel authority in 2022, council secretariats remained small and constrained in organizational and budgetary autonomy. The study asks how a council service category should be created, and at what scope personnel should be managed, to secure both independence and stable operations.

Drawing on legislation, prior research, the practice of comparable institutions and staffing data for council secretariats, the study compares institutional alternatives. Three ways of creating the category (a new council sub-series, a council series added to the existing general-service grade table, or a separate grade table) are compared for independence, ease of personnel management and feasibility; five scopes of personnel management (each council, councils combined with audit staff, metropolitan or provincial, regional, and national) are compared for promotion structure, ease of management, feasibility and the autonomy of each council.

The authors propose, as a reasonable alternative, a separate grade table for local council general-service officials combined with personnel management at the metropolitan or provincial level. The separate grade table secures independence from the executive, while provincial-level management eases the promotion and rotation problems of small councils. Supplementary measures are also suggested, such as leaving some open-position and fixed-term appointments to each council and ensuring fair operation of a provincial personnel committee.

Its contribution lies in turning independent personnel authority from a declaration into concrete choices about organization and personnel practice. The detailed design of legal amendments and further validation through expert assessment are left for future research.