Summary

The construction of smart cities was launched in Korea in 2003 as a part of the second phase of the Housing Development Project. Initially, the smart cities project was aimed at creating a smart city infrastructure equipped with advanced information and communication technologies, but recently the focus shifted to the creation of new industries and the development of data management platforms in smart cities. SAI Korea paid attention to a recent report by the Korea Development Institute, which found that only 27.3% of Koreans surveyed understand the feasibility of implementing a smart city project. In this regard, the auditors suggested that the government's work on smart cities is not effective enough. In addition, the analysis of media data on the experience of the project implementation showed a low level of service in smart cities and the construction of typical basic facilities regardless of the characteristics of the site. Auditors analyzed the causes of the problems in the smart cities project in the pre-audit period 2020-2021. The audit revealed several significant shortcomings, among them: - lack of approved smart city construction plans and advisory boards (out of 36 local governments, twelve authorities responsible for the development of 13 smart city districts in Korea failed to draw up and approve construction plans because they were unaware of this obligation to do so; 19 out of 36 local governments responsible for 22 smart city districts failed to form advisory boards for their projects, citing the lack of relevant departments within their structures to do so); - lack of implementation plans and failure to determine ownership of the newly created smart city infrastructure; - improper selection of a site for the construction of smart city services; - re-installation of unused smart city services such as traffic management systems, etc.