Role of law as a guardian of the right to use public sector information: Case study of Korean government

With data revolution, data is emerging as a new raw material. As the importance of data has increased, interest in the availability of public sector information (PSI) has also grown. PSI created in the public sector comprises public attributes and directly impacts national administration and citizen's lives. Korea has almost the highest level of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure and considerable data through government-led policies. As a result of such policies, Korea has demonstrated excellent results in the United Nation's e-government survey, ITU's ICT development index, and OECD's public data openness index. Paradoxically, however, this history and experience is a stumbling block to a new era. PSI, which is a basic resource for realizing the value of openness, sharing, cooperation, and communication, should be actively managed and opened by government to provide support for reuse in the sense that the government is its main producer and manager. However, no matter how good the quality of PSI through data management is and how excellent policies and institutions are established, if the private sector cannot actively use it, it is useless. What is the role of government and law in the context of changing the way data is managed and blurring sectoral boundaries? This paper aims to propose core challenges by analyzing the case of Korea in order to derive a basis for discussions to coordinate public and private cooperation and legal relations in the process. To begin with, we analyze the changes in the management environment of data and PSI and identify the role of government and law in responding to changes in the legal rights. Then, we discuss how Korea responds to change, examines related policies by function and discussions on the data law, which seem to have the greatest effect on government's role, and suggests essential tasks to change its role accordingly.