Special Report Suwon City Transformed 2: Innovation in Civil Service Administration—The 'Saebbit Civil Service Center'

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Jung Jun-sung] Suwon Special City has a key window for field-oriented civil services that takes responsibility for and resolves complex and difficult civil petitions. This is the 'Saebbit Civil Service Center.' Since 'veteran civil servants' are stationed here, citizens experience civil petition handling that is distinctly different from other local governments. Therefore, it would be no exaggeration to say that the 'veteran civil servant system' at the Saebbit Civil Service Center represents Suwon City's transformed administrative services. In short, the veteran civil servant system not only facilitates smooth handling of complex administrative processes that individual citizens find difficult to resolve, but also provides direct help to their lives and drives indirect changes. We examine Suwon City's Saebbit Civil Service Center and veteran civil servant system, which have led administrative innovation.

■ The Core of the Saebbit Civil Service Center: 'Veteran Civil Servants'

The veteran civil servants, who can be called the core of Suwon City's Saebbit Civil Service Center, voluntarily become special problem-solvers for citizens.

Assisting an octogenarian citizen who sought to find traces and information about his father, who was abducted to North Korea during the war, is one example of resolving personal issues. Although the information was difficult for the citizen to find after so much time had passed, a veteran civil servant from Suwon City stepped forward as the citizen's petition advocate and succeeded in securing relevant materials from related agencies. The veteran civil servant even added sincerity to the courtesy of presenting a certificate of appreciation to the citizen who recovered his father's honor.

Veteran civil servants actively utilize their flexibility and experience in supporting citizens to organize their complex situations in stages, such as acquiring basic livelihood security eligibility after 21 months, and assisting a young adult citizen with mobility difficulties in moving when external communication had been blocked. The veteran civil servants' flexibility and experience are actively being applied to resolve difficult individual civil petitions.

In the process of handling group issues, the proactive efforts of the Saebbit Civil Service Center have often shined. One example is the improvement of the school commute route around the front gate of a Suwon high school in the second half of 2023, shortly after the center began operations. To address various obstructions that threatened safety, they led cooperation from eight agencies, organizations, and departments. Additionally, the veteran civil servant system took the lead in rolling up its sleeves to gain cooperation from landowners living elsewhere to supply city gas to 14 households in a foothill village, leading the way in resolving numerous inconveniences for multiple parties.

Beyond actively resolving problems for individuals or groups, the system also rolled up its sleeves for improving unreasonable systems or policies. Examples include reviewing project costs through field visits to save school environment improvement project budgets, and proposing amendments to the Tobacco Business Act to the Presidential Secretariat for Coordination of Government Policies on behalf of collective civil petitions requesting withdrawal of approval for electronic cigarette sales shops in front of schools.

■ Saebbit Civil Service Center Driving Innovation in Civil Service Administration in Just Three Years of Operation

The Saebbit Civil Service Center, which can be called the center of Suwon City's civil service administrative innovation, is located in the main building of Suwon City Hall. It began operations on April 10, 2023, and has been running tirelessly for innovation over three years.

The Saebbit Civil Service Center, created by remodeling space in the City Hall main building, was innovative from the start in its spatial environment. Rather than the rigid atmosphere typical of government offices, it was designed like a botanical garden or café with a warm and bright atmosphere to welcome civil petitioners. It was designed so that any petitioner visiting with a somewhat heavy heart would have the door opened wide, and civil servants would actively handle their petitions by running on the ground themselves.

When petitioners or citizens visit the Saebbit Civil Service Center, guidance staff first listen to the civil petition content and direct them to the relevant department. Even if petitioners do not know the department or person in charge, the Saebbit Civil Service Center first confirms the petition with a sincere attitude and connects them with the person in charge so that they can have their petition handled.

The most special aspect is the veteran civil servants. Rather than single-project-department tasks, they exclusively handle complex civil petitions or petitions where the responsible department is unclear, and handle them directly by running on the ground. They take charge of 'ping-pong petitions' where departmental boundaries are ambiguous and no processing department can be designated, 'chronic petitions' that have received numerous complaints over an extended period, 'complex petitions' that require coordination between multiple departments and other agencies, and 'other petitions' that are difficult for departments to resolve or lack basis.

Veteran civil servants are team-leader-level civil servants with over 20 years of experience who volunteer. They are recruited evenly from various career paths including administration, civil engineering, architecture, social welfare, and taxation, so they can exercise the expertise accumulated in each field. Since the operation of the Saebbit Civil Service Center began, a total of 4,008 civil petitions have been processed using the experience and know-how of veteran civil servants over a period of nearly three years until the end of last month (March 31).

■ Saebbit Civil Service Center 'Citizen Satisfaction' at 96.15 points...Opening a New Administrative Horizon

Over the past three years, Suwon City's Saebbit Civil Service Center has been recognized as an exemplary case by various organizations, with its innovative achievements acknowledged. Suwon City is not settling for these achievements and recognition, and is demonstrating its commitment to not slowing the pace of continuous innovation in civil service administration for citizen satisfaction.

First, the Saebbit Civil Service Center received high scores from users. In a satisfaction survey conducted by Suwon City on 645 users at the end of last year, satisfaction with the Saebbit Civil Service Center reached 95.84 points. This score increased compared to the previous year's survey results (95.05 points). In particular, citizen satisfaction was 96.15 points, higher than staff satisfaction (95.54 points), and the evaluation that civil petition response and resolution are rapid exceeded 97 points, the highest satisfaction level.

Awards from various organizations also demonstrate the effectiveness of the Saebbit Civil Service Center. In the second half of 2023, its first year of operation, the Saebbit Civil Service Center received excellence awards at the Suwon City Proactive Administration Excellence Case showcase and the Gyeonggi Province Civil Service Improvement Excellence Competition, receiving attention from the start. Subsequently, in 2024, it achieved the remarkable feat of receiving the Presidential Award in the comprehensive evaluation of proactive administration for local governments.

Public interest in the Saebbit Civil Service Center, which has opened a new administrative horizon, is also high. A total of 85 organizations, including nearby local governments, government agencies such as the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and overseas organizations, have visited Suwon's Saebbit Civil Service Center to benchmark its innovation.

The city is upgrading the Saebbit Civil Service Center to the next level. The intention is to improve services with a field-oriented focus by expanding the on-site civil service consultation that was conducted last year under the name 'Saebbitshinmungo (Saebbit Suggestion Box): Veterans Go,' which means 'Veteran Civil Servants Visit.' This is to collect civil petitions from blind spots and establish an innovative administrative service system that responds to increasingly diverse and complex civil petitions. Since the beginning of this year, veteran civil servants have been visiting each district office monthly to identify region-customized civil petitions and actively work to resolve them.