Statistics Korea

Legal Authority

• Statistics Act Article 12 Item 2 (Statistics-based Policy Evaluation)
• Statistics Act Enforcement Ordinance Article 17 Item 2 (Procedures and Methods for Statistics-based Policy Evaluation)

Background

• With the emergence of knowledge and information society, general consensus has been reached among the public that accurate statistics are essential to support decision making for all social entities including the government, businesses, and households.
• While the government needs to lead efforts to develop and improve statistics required to support policies, it has been difficult to implement policies grounded in statistics due to lack of interest in statistics among line ministries.
• Acknowledging the negative consequences (i.e. inefficiency and the public’s distrust of policies) of policies without their basis in statistics, 13 major statistical producers including Ministry of Strategy and Finance and Ministry of Health and Welfare and led by Statistics Korea came together in January 2007 to come up with actions.
• National Statistical Reform Strategy for development of social statistics was reported to and approved at the Cabinet Meeting in June 2007. The main agenda in this strategy was to introduce the statistics-based policy evaluation system.

Description

• When the head of central government agency is planning on establishing new or amending existing policy by enacting and amending legislation,
• Commissioner of Statistics Korea shall evaluate on the availability of statistical indicators necessary to support policy implementation and evaluation and feasibility of related statistical development and improvement plan.
• Head of central government agency must produce the required statistical indicator based on the evaluation results, and use the indicators in policies.

Evaluation Process