Young civil servants are using artificial intelligence (AI) to change how the public sector works. They are developing services to automate repetitive on-the-ground tasks such as searching laws and precedents and analyzing global AI trends, while leading interagency collaboration and voluntary study groups, stirring a wind of change through the public sector.
According to the government on the 13th, the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), the Ministry of Government Legislation, and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety jointly developed the "AI Legal Assistant" and will run a pilot for all civil servants starting on the 14th. Developed collaboratively by the three ministries, the "AI Legal Assistant" is a service that, when asked a question in natural language, finds relevant laws, precedents, administrative rules, and local ordinances and provides answers along with their legal basis.
Development began last June when Ministry of Government Legislation officials inquired with the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, which operates the "government-wide AI common platform," about using the platform. They judged that combining the common platform's legal retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) with the Ministry of Government Legislation's knowledge of legal interpretation and drafting could improve the efficiency of the ministry's work.
The Interior Ministry official who received the inquiry proposed, "Let's have civil servants build it themselves rather than outsourcing it to an external firm." Although it is uncommon for collaboration to arise from discussions among officials from different ministries, under the shared goal of streamlining how they work, two officials from the Ministry of Government Legislation and one from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety immediately divided their roles.
The Interior Ministry laid the technical foundation and moved up the addition of about 50,000 local ordinances from five cities and provinces, which had originally been scheduled for the second half of the year. The Ministry of Government Legislation, with expertise in legal interpretation and drafting, designed the answer standards and prompts and verified accuracy. LG AI Research's "K-EXAONE" and Upstage's "Solar," which are participating in the MSIT's "Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project," were also used. In this way, a service combining each ministry's technology, data, and expertise was completed in just one month.
Such cases can be found across various institutions, including government ministries and local governments. The changes are mainly led by young civil servants skilled in using AI. At the MSIT, five officials including Deputy Director Lee Jae-ho formed "AI Sapiens" last April. They developed a "Global AI Trend Analysis Agent" that automatically collects and analyzes AI trends in major countries and social media posts by key figures.
At the Personal Information Protection Commission, the study group "Personal Information AX Engine Room," led by Deputy Director Ju Mun-ho, held its ninth session last week. About 30 employees who joined voluntarily study AI use cases during lunch and identify services for their work.
Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung said, "The AI Legal Assistant is the first case to demonstrate the potential of public-sector AI transformation (AX)," adding, "We will spread across the entire government the work innovation in which every civil servant directly develops and uses the AI services they need."
