| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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a. Creativity
‘Safety Sinmungo’ represents the only case of a government creating a publication to receive notice of and handle risks in all areas. For instance, the ‘fixmystreet’ application operated by an overseas civic organization only receives complaints about public facilities and is deficient in assuring the completion of reports. ‘Safety Sinmungo’ promotes citizens’ participation and establishes governance under the slogan of “My hazard report saves both my family and neighbors”. In this way, it plays a significant role in building safe environments.
b. Functional Innovation
‘Safety Sinmungo’ has fundamentally transformed government policy. This initiative has established a structure in which citizens actively participate and the government resolves reports in the shortest possible time. Due to the rapid response of the government, accountability has also been dramatically heightened.
Additionally, everyone can easily report risks anytime and anywhere through ‘Safety Sinmungo’. It also provides features for the disabled such as voice recognition and caption service. ‘Safety Sinmungo’ received an award of ‘excellence’ in an Accessibility Assessment for the Disabled given by Ministry of the Interior, Republic of Korea in 2015. In addition, multi-lingual ‘Safety Sinmungo’ services are currently being prepared for the convenience of foreign nationals.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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a. Implementer
MPSS is the key implementer of this initiative. More specifically, it is implemented by the Safety Sinmungo Management Task Force of the MPSS; this team is composed of personnel dispatched from the central and local governments. Nonetheless, MPSS is NOT the only implementer of this initiative. Since the risk reports need to be assigned to the suitable organizations for processing, cooperation with other agencies is a key success factor of this initiative.
b. Size of the population affected by this initiative
Every citizen living in Korea is affected by this initiative. This includes 51.7 million people in the territory of the Korea and 1.71 million foreign nationals. Considering that the initiative builds safer environments for the people, future generations will receive a great benefit from the ‘Safety Sinmungo’ service.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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In order to develop and implement the ‘Safety Sinmungo’ system, there were three phases: service design and implementation (phase 1), service enhancement (phase 2), and service stabilization (phase 3). During phase 1, the service design and implementation phase, various stakeholders were gathered, financial resources were secured, and above all, service safety was prioritized. In phase 2, the service enhancement phase, the MPSS actively promoted public participation to expand public participation and stabilized the application service. Finally, in phase 3, the MPSS plans to institutionalize measures such as mileage system phasing so that this service can be established as an aspect of safety culture.
a. Phase 1: Service Design and Implementation (September 2014 ~ February 2015)
Initially, the ‘Reporting Channel for Safety’ was temporarily added on September 30, 2014 to existing civil complaint systems for public convenience in reporting risks. In order to deal with complaints reported, ‘Complaint Response Management Team’ was created in September 2014. Subsequently, there was a need to establish a separate reporting channel, and ‘Safety Sinmungo’ system was established based on information technology in November 2014. The web page (December 12, 2014) and mobile phone application (February 6, 2015) were launched thereafter.
b. Phase 2: Service Enhancement (March 2015 ~ March 2017)
The launch of the ‘Safety Sinmungo’ system has augmented the convenience of safety risk reporting functions for various citizens including the elderly and disabled. In 2015, the MPSS developed a system integration plan for ‘Safety Sinmungo’ and MPSS has been carrying out service enhancement as planned since 2016. Furthermore, ‘Safety Sinmungo’ has been pre-installed on newly launched mobile phones after September 2016 so that citizens can use easily without being required to download the application.
c. Phase 3: Service Stabilization and Promoting Safety Reporting culture (April 2017~)
One of the main purposes of this initiative is to establish ‘Safety Sinmungo’ as representative of all systems for maintaining the public safety so that the service is accepted as part of relevant culture. For this, the MPSS is endeavoring to incorporate a mileage and reward system for those who report risks. In this way, the MPSS plans to enforce contents related to life safety so that anyone can easily and proactively report threats.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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a. The Design of the initiative
‘Safety Sinmungo’ was established with the whole support of the stakeholders. It was launched by active participation of more than 20 safety related agencies. In order to strengthen the cooperation and get the opinions of stakeholders, meetings of affiliated institutions took place. Therefore, ‘Safety Sinmungo’ has established shared governance arrangement by cooperating with various stakeholders for implementing ‘Safety Service’. Currently, the MPSS is building safety reporting channels on the websites of each department of central and local governments, municipalities, and public institutions such as The Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission to link all safety reporting system to this ‘Safety Sinmungo’. As a result, reporting channels have been established on the websites of more than 60 public institutions.
b. Governance constitution
The MPSS has established broad governance structures for implementing ‘Safety Sinmungo’. Government, public institutions, citizens, NGOs and corporations have also supported the implementation of ‘Safety Sinmungo’. For example, Samsung and LG Electronics opted to pre-install ‘Safety Sinmungo’ on their newly launched mobile phones. Many corporations have been voluntarily participating in ‘Safety Sinmungo’ related activities such as screening video clips to promote public awareness. In addition, the Volunteer of Community Safety Monitor (a nationwide NGO), the Green Mothers Society, 11,563 with 60,000 elementary and junior high school students, and the General Insurance Association of Korea have been actively participating and supporting ‘Safety Sinmungo’ and its related campaigns.
c. Voluntary participation of citizens
In the case of the Volunteer of community Safety Monitor, it is noteworthy that they are organized by voluntary public participation to protect communities. It handles approximately 2,000 reports per month and is comprised of a diverse range of people from ranging from elementary school students to retirees. The number of members is approximately 80,000, and it has been increasing every month. Accordingly, diverse people have been working altogether to promote safety and institutional resettlement.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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a. Prevention of major incidents
Since the launch of ‘Safety Sinmungo’, 241,912 reports out of 245,881 received have been addressed (rate of 98.4%); due to this handling ratio, a number of large and small- scale accidents have been prevented (September 30 2014 ~ February 28 2017). For example, there have been a fewer accidents occurring due to a tight bend on Route 2 in front of the Gwanyang Terminal; it was possible to prevent large-scale human accidents through road maintenance following a report from a citizen via the ‘Safety Sinmungo’. In the case of Route 13, one report mentioned the risk of falling into a deep reservoir when driving at night; therefore, a guardrail was installed to prevent future accidents.
By applying previously mentioned ‘Heinrich’s Law’ (1:29:300), it is estimated that this initiative has helped prevent major incidents.
b. Promoting public awareness of safety through citizens’ participation
Safety consciousness of citizens is one of the most essential factors for preventing risk because safety is not guaranteed by government efforts alone. The participation rate of people in reporting risks has increased every year. The average number of reports received in 2015 was 203, but it more than doubled in 2016 to 432 cases. Currently, official records indicate that more than 1 million people have downloaded the ‘Safety Sinmungo’ application in the shortest time. Ultimately, the greatest achievement of this policy is the governance. All concerned institutions have been endeavoring to implement this initiative due to the increase in safety accountability among local governments, business entities, and civic organizations.
c. Expanding safety services for vulnerable people and creating safety-related jobs
This initiative focuses on improving the quality of life of vulnerable groups. ‘Safety Sinmungo’ enables vulnerable groups to promptly receive administrative services without discrimination. These administrative services include improvement of safety and hygiene levels without incurring many opportunity costs. It has also contributed to the creation of jobs related to disaster management including those for renovating and repairing risk-prone facilities.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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a. Multi-stakeholders participation
‘Safety Sinmungo’ is not a system through which the MPSS responds to all the complaints received. The agencies that need to respond to the complaints of the people include local governments and public institutions such as the Korea Expressway Corporation, and Korean Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO). In the beginning, there had been several difficulties in improving the service through this new ‘Safety Sinmungo’ system because there were great number of stakeholders participated.
However, it has become possible to coordinate their interests and to build system through the continuous consultations because both government and public institutions acknowledged that managing potential risks rapidly is one of their primary responsibilities.
b. Lack of public awareness in the initial stage of ‘Safety Sinmungo’ application
The second obstacle was the difficulty of publicly promoting the ‘Safety Sinmungo’ application due to insufficient budgetary resources for public relations. In order to overcome this obstacle, a public campaign to encourage the downloading of the ‘Safety Sinmungo’ application has been launched. It subsequently achieved a record of 1.6 million downloads within 27 months. Currently ‘Safety Sinmungo’ is the most frequently downloaded application among those released by public institutions in Korea, and a video clip for promoting ‘Safety Sinmungo’ has been ranked first in average daily views among the YouTube contents of public institutions (http://youtu.be/NBRGvjKoTM0).
c. Controversy over pre-installing ‘Safety Sinmungo’ application on mobiles
‘Safety Sinmungo’ application is being pre-installed on the newly launched mobiles of Samsung and LG Electronics. Regarding this practice, there was an opinion that it was overly compulsory for consumers. However, since ‘Safety Sinmungo’ was implemented to protect public safety, it was possible to convince stakeholders through a serious of discussions. Finally, pre-installation of ‘Safety Sinmungo’ on mobiles was made possible and this application is now pre-installed on new mobile phones in Korea.
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