Administrative documents unreadable by AI... 'Onnara' attachments to be switched to 'open format'

"Hangul files to be used only when there is a special need, with mid-to-long-term improvements"

On-device AI (PG) [Illustration by Kang Min-ji]

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety has begun improving its document system to create an 'AI-friendly' document environment that is easy for artificial intelligence (AI) to read and utilize.

According to the response submitted to Rep. Wi Seong-gon of the Democratic Party, a member of the National Assembly's Committee on the Interior and Safety, the Ministry plans to gradually improve the attachment function of 'Onnara Document System,' the government employee work system, by next year, transitioning to allow only open-format documents to be attached.

Furthermore, the Ministry plans to improve the system to allow parallel attachment of PDF documents, supporting AI in recognizing and utilizing administrative documents more easily.

Open-format documents are document formats whose technical specifications are public, allowing anyone to freely view and implement them. For Korean documents, the 'HWPX' (open format) is the equivalent, replacing the existing 'HWP' (closed format).

Previously, a survey conducted by Rep. Wi Seong-gon's office found that 91.1% of 14,208 administrative agency employees nationwide responded that they primarily create administrative documents such as reports and plans in formats difficult for AI to recognize, such as HWP (Hangul) or image/scanned PDFs.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, currently, only 65 out of 302 organizations (21.5%) have set their Onnara systems to allow only open-format documents.

Among these, 62 out of 75 central administrative agencies (82.7%) and 3 out of 227 local governments (1.3%) fall into this category.

The Ministry is also pursuing a plan to improve the system in consultation with Hancom to automatically save documents in an open format (HWPX) when created.

From simple documents like situation reports and regular reports to using a standard format-based editor in an intelligent work management platform instead of Hangul, the plan is to use Hangul reports similarly to presentation materials (PPT) only when there is a special need in the mid-to-long term.

The Ministry also decided to revise Article 5 of the 'Regulations on the Operation and Innovation of Administrative Work' to explicitly include 'Consideration of AI Utilization' in the basic principles of document processing.

Plans are also underway to establish new standards in the e-government website quality management guide and the digital government service user interface/user experience (UI/UX) guidelines, mandating the attachment of files that consider AI utilization.

Rep. Wi Seong-gon emphasized, "If we continue like this, public data could become a 'digital Galapagos,' disconnected from the global standard ecosystem." He stressed, "In the age of AI, transitioning documents to open standards so that machines can read them is not an option, but a necessity." Yonhap News