On the 30th, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced that it will fully operate an automated system to expedite the maintenance project for aging planned cities.
So far, due to the excessive manpower, expense, and time required for collecting and verifying written consents necessary at each stage of the maintenance project, there has been a continuous demand for the introduction of an automated consent method. In response, the government and the National Assembly revised the Urban Renewal Act, which was implemented in December last year, and established a legal basis for operating the automated consent system through amending the Enforcement Decree of the Aging Planned City Act (legislative notice from February 19 to March 31).
However, for the maintenance project of the first stage new towns, the need for prompt promotion has led to efforts to introduce electronic voting ahead of the implementation of relevant laws, and they have been able to use the electronic voting system by applying for regulatory exceptions under the smart city regulatory sandbox.
In existing maintenance projects, collecting and verifying consent forms from owners of land and other properties take more than 5 months for 3,000 households, and collecting consents once requires about 100 million won in expenses. However, if consent forms are collected in real-time through the automated consent system, the time for verification can be shortened from the existing 5 months to 2 weeks, and expenses can be reduced from 100 million won to 4.5 million won, leading to expectations for increased project speed and cost savings.
The Korea Land and Geospatial Informatix Corporation (LX) will be responsible for the establishment and operation of the automated consent system, and local governments wishing to utilize the system will sign a business agreement with LX to provide information related to business sites, personal data, etc.
LX will send an electronic voting link to owners of land and other properties through alerts and messages, allowing them to participate in electronic voting. After the voting ends, LX can check statistics and reports on the electronic voting.
When the automated consent system is first used, it is necessary to collect and verify the consent forms for personal information of land and other property owners to confirm their voting rights. Additionally, to accommodate digitally vulnerable groups such as the elderly, offline voting must also be promoted concurrently.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport expects that the preparation period for each stage of the aging planned city maintenance project will be significantly shortened through the newly introduced automated consent system.
In particular, it is expected to be used for the procedure of obtaining consent from residents to form a resident representative group in the special redevelopment areas of aging planned cities, starting with the leading district of the first stage new towns. Furthermore, when moving forward with union general meetings and the like, it will also be possible to hold online meetings concurrently with offline meetings.