Personal Information Protection Commission appoints 100 experts for public-sector privacy assessment

The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Monday it appointed a 100-member expert panel for its 2026 review of privacy safeguards at 1,458 public institutions.

The review combines agencies' self-assessments of statutory privacy duties with panel examinations of their work. It covers central government bodies and affiliated public institutions, local governments and local public corporations. The mechanism, established under Article 11-2 of the Personal Information Protection Act, comprehensively diagnoses public institutions' privacy protection capabilities and encourages improvements in areas found lacking.

The members have experience in privacy law, information protection and security, and include experts from academia, the legal profession and industry. At the appointment ceremony, the PIPC issued appointment certificates and briefed the panel on the assessment. Members also completed trial assessments in sessions organized by indicator.

Panel members will inspect sites, review evaluations, grade results and identify strong and weak cases. They will also advise on improvements to the assessment's methods, structure, criteria and indicators.

“The assessment offers an opportunity to carefully identify practical vulnerabilities that public institutions may find difficult to recognize on their own,” Go Nak-jun, PIPC's director general for prevention and dispute mediation, said. “We plan to continue raising the level of personal information protection across the public sector through the assessment.”