Election commission adds AI rules to expanded e-government regulation

The National Election Commission said Friday it had revised its rule on the electronic handling of administrative work, adding a legal basis for using artificial intelligence in public services and requiring the agency to draw up recovery plans for system failures.

The revision follows amendments to the Electronic Government Act, the commission said. It also replaces the rule's original title, which referred to the "promotion of computerization," with "electronic processing."

The new Article 11-2 lists the technologies the commission may use in electronic administrative services: natural language processing, voice recognition and image recognition. It also covers other technologies that learn, reason or make judgments electronically where they are needed for intelligent services. The secretary general is to decide how the technologies are used and supported.

In a separate addition, the commission created a procedure for people to request administrative information held about them. Applicants must specify which office holds the record, what information they want, who will receive it and, for recurring requests, how often and for how long. Where an office restricts or refuses a request, it must tell the person why.

Articles 36-2 through 36-4 require the secretary general to draw up an information-system failure management plan every three years and to revise it when policy changes or when systems are built or retired. Systems are to be graded by the importance of the services they carry, how many people use them and how many other systems a failure would affect, and the grade determines the level of management.

The commission also deleted Articles 6 through 8 and Article 18, which covered civil complaint handling, after those provisions moved to a separate law on civil complaints, and adjusted terminology in the remaining articles. "Civil complainants" become "users of electronic administrative services" throughout the rule, and the rule's chapter on civil complaint processing is retitled to cover the provision and use of electronic administrative services.

The amended rule was issued as Regulation No. 670 under the name of Whi Chul-hwan, acting chairman of the commission. A companion revision to the commission's office management rule replaces references to the old title with the new one.