Introduction of Smart city certification system for the first time in Korea

The smart city certification system will be implemented for the first time in Korea. Starting from August, smart cities with innovation, institutional environment, service technology and infrastructure will receive ‘smart city certification’ from the government.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said a 2021 contest to certify Korea’s representative ‘smart city’ will be launched at the government level.

The smart city certification system will identify the level of smart cities in Korea through smart city performance indicators and give them ‘certification’ and ‘grade’ to compare between cities. It will be actively used for evaluating the performance of smart cities, discovering excellent cities, and promoting.

Major foreign countries and companies have already introduced smart city diagnostic indicators as a tool to evaluate the performance and spread success models, evaluating the level of each city, and using the results for policy promotion and public relations. For example, the European smart city indicators for EU, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)’s smart city standards, CISCO’s smart city indicators, and IBM’s smart city performance indicators are representative.

There is a point that domestic smart cities have been undervalued overseas because there is no standard evaluation method to grasp the status and level of smart cities and that some local governments have to challenge international evaluations individually, limiting the systematic development and self-sustaining leap forward.

Smart city certification will be granted to local governments that are highly innovative, have good governance & institutional environment, smart service technology, and the like according to smart city indicators.

Innovation assesses the competency and environment for the promotion of smart cities such as the competence of public, private, and citizens and the disclosure of information and data utilization and linkage. Governance & institutional environment evaluates areas where various stakeholders are making horizontal problem-solving and policy decisions through active participation. In addition, for service technology and infrastructure, evaluate the areas where service technology is applied appropriated to the conditions of each local government as smart-city-based elements (intelligent facilities and services, information and communication networks, urban integrated operation center, etc.).

The cities that apply for certification will be classified with the size of local government such as large cities with a population of 500,000 or more and small and medium cities with a population of 500,000 or less.

The proposal of local government will be submitted and evaluated at the end of June, and the cities to be certified will be selected in August.

An official from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said, “we will evaluate 5 grades for each local government and certify to the top 3 grades. We will disclose the grade of the certified local governments and they will have the opportunity to be promoted as an excellent smart city at domestic and abroad through commendation and copperplate awards.

Reported by 'Smart City Today'