The Korean government will make the disclosure of civil servant performance evaluation results mandatory and introduce a continuous assessment system that records and reflects work contributions on an ongoing basis. The move aims to enhance transparency and fairness in evaluations, following persistent criticism that the actual contributions of working-level officials are not properly reflected.
The Ministry of Personnel Management (MPM) and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) announced Thursday that they will overhaul the overall performance management system so that civil servants' substantive work contributions can be more accurately assessed. The MPM gave advance legislative notice the same day of a revised bill on the "Regulation on Performance Evaluation of Public Officials" containing these measures.
The core of the revision is the mandatory disclosure of evaluation results. Going forward, all agencies must notify evaluation subjects of their performance rating results. Until now, some agencies disclosed results only upon individual request, preventing employees from reviewing their evaluations in a timely manner — a problem the new system aims to eliminate. As a result, those evaluated will be able to accurately verify their results and make more effective use of procedures such as filing objections. The government also plans to enhance transparency by requiring that the list of recipients of the S-grade — the highest performance bonus tier — be disclosed to all employees.
The evaluation method will also change. Starting in the second half of this year, the government will introduce "e-Saram," a digital performance management system that records and manages individual work processes on an ongoing basis. The plan is to enable evaluators and those being evaluated to continuously monitor work progress and exchange feedback, thereby improving the accuracy of evaluations. Not only individually performed tasks but also contributions to joint projects and inter-departmental collaboration will be included as evaluation factors, reflecting collaborative contributions.
A corresponding overhaul of the work system will also be pursued. The MOIS plans to sequentially roll out and operate "On AI," an intelligent work management system that enables functions such as collaborative document editing among working-level officials, across all central administrative agencies starting in May. The goal is to document actual work processes and contribution levels in greater detail, thereby improving the objectivity of evaluations.
Organizational culture improvements will also be pursued in parallel. The government plans to specify work assignments more concretely in advance, name co-authors on major reports, and expand the participation of working-level officials in key meetings and briefings so that actual contributions are made visible.
The government plans to begin full-scale improvement of the performance management system with this regulatory revision, followed by the refinement of subordinate guidelines and the expansion of the system. "We will spread a reasonable public service culture so that those who actually do the work can receive fair evaluations," MOIS Minister Yun Ho-jung said.
