Basic Report

The Korean government has made a great effort to improve the public servicedelivery system for the efficient delivery system of public service would not onlyraise the competence and competitiveness of the government, but also it is consideredas a key element to regain the trust of the people. The previous policy reformproposals have put most emphasis on providing convenience for citizens, and thepolicies were uniformly applied to all types of governments, without consideration oftheir features, such as urban or rural nature. Accordingly, those policy reformproposals failed to reflect the differences among diverse local governments. Therefore,it is necessary to establish an efficient public service delivery system reflecting thevariables which might influence the supply of assorted public services. This articleendeavors to propose a public service delivery system applying the differencesemanated from the distinctive types of local governments. The four sorts of localgovernments are taken into account in this article: local governments in urban areas,in urban and rural consolidated areas, in rural areas, and in peculiar areas; the typesof public service covered in this article are limited to public complaint and issuanceof public documents, social service, public health service, water and sewerage service,culture and physical training. The analysis of this article is focused on the deliverymethod, organization and process of public services.The reform proposal of public service delivery system for the local governmentsin urban areas is as follows: service for civil complaint and issuance of publicdocuments can be improved by introducing automatic public document issuance system(like an automated teller machine, ATM) and by opening a “nighttime window forpublic complaints”; social service and public health service can be bettered off byusing affluent private resources in urban area, to build up a public-private partnershipso as to manage the integrated system of social and public health services; thedelivery system of culture and physical training would be augmented by utilizingprivate facilities and consigning the management of governmental facilities for cultureand physical training to private and civil(and cultural) organizations; the sewerageservice delivery can be improved by dividing performance of the service areas: aservice area of local governments, which would oversee and direct the industrialwastewater, and a service area for private corporations, which would maintain, repair,and administer the sewage facilities, and reprocess and redischarge the wastewater.The reform proposal for local governments in urban and rural consolidated areas, isas follows: the local government in this area should provide EupㆍMyunㆍDong(basiclevel of local governments)-centered-public services, and if those basic level localgovernments are not capable of performing public services, the main office of the cityor county government should introduce “quick delivery” system to supply the publicservices; the social service delivery should be consigned to the private company whichwould provide a field-based-service, enhancing public accessibility; the local publichealth service center should be empowered to take a principal role to improve publichealth service delivery; water service system would be enhanced by switching thecurrent service system of a personal visit into a telephone, fax, or internet applicationsystem; culture and physical training should be consigned to a private company forthe efficient service delivery and management.The reform proposal of public service delivery system for local governments inrural areas is as follows: an rural area with sparse population should introduce “quickdelivery” system to provide a public document service; the social service deliverysystem should be switched from the existing individual visit system into an integratedvisit system, and particularly in an area of sparse population, the establishment ofadministrative Myun is recommended in order to constitute a strategic base; theservice of public health, and culture and physical training can be improved byconverting the existing supply system by separate organizations into the privateconsignment system or local government partnership in order to provide the publicservices jointly; the current dualistic water service system, the general water serviceon the one hand and the water supply service for basic local governments on theother hand, should be consigned to private parties: the water supply for large rurallocal governments(Gun) should be consigned to a unitary private company, while forsmaller, depopulated local governments, joint private consignment is advisable.The reform proposal of public service delivery system for the local governmentsin peculiar areas is as follows: civil complaint and public document service would beimproved by introducing the following systems, such as public complaint guardianservice, visiting service, agent service systems; social service delivery would beenhanced by converting the current, respective government-centered-service deliverysystem to an integrated service delivery system, and by building a public-privatepartnership network; public health service would be also progressed by switching theexisting government-centered-supply system into a public-private partnership system;the consolidated delivery system of water and sewerage services should be convertedfrom the local government-centered-supply to again the delivery system by thepublic-private partnership, and the sewerage service and the water supply serviceshould be managed separately; the services of culture and physical training need alsoa paradigm shift from the idea that a local government must initiate and direct thoseservices to the idea that the partnership of civil, public and private parties worktogether for improving the services and the delivery of them.