Gyeonggi Province is launching a pilot program to apply generative AI across the entire welfare administration process, from interactive counseling tailored to residents' situations to crisis assessment, benefit application guidance, and documentation of social workers' home visits.
On July 29, the province announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Social Security Information Service at the Korea Press Center in Seoul. The AI welfare services will be operational in Suwon, Hwaseong, Pyeongtaek, Siheung, and Osan from August until the end of the year.
This initiative moves away from the traditional model of developing technology and implementing it uniformly across administrative agencies. Instead, it will apply AI to real welfare counseling, benefit applications, and home visit tasks, using feedback from residents and public officials to refine its functions and operational standards.
The province plans to utilize 168 million won in national funding secured through a Ministry of Health and Welfare competition to test welfare counseling services for residents alongside support functions for public officials. The results from the five cities, which have different administrative environments and welfare needs, will be compared to develop a model suitable for on-site application.
The resident services will employ a generative AI language model to engage in natural conversations, assessing users' household situations, income, housing, health, and caregiving needs, and providing tailored guidance on relevant systems and support services.
Based on the information gathered during counseling, the AI will help classify potential crises to assist public officials in their assessments. It will also verify functions that organize complex counseling information into charts or summaries and present it in various formats, such as text or visual displays.
For residents applying for social security benefits, the AI will provide tailored guidance on eligibility, application procedures, required documents, and submission agencies, reducing the inconvenience of having to check multiple institutions or websites.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare is promoting a system that supports decision-making by reviewing necessary data for assessing the appropriateness of social security benefits and minimizing the risk of omissions. However, the final decisions on benefits and case assessments will remain the responsibility of public officials.
To support public officials during home visits or on-site counseling, a mobile-based work support environment will be established. This will allow for automatic input of counseling details, conversion of voice to text, and guidance on suitable welfare services based on specific cases.
This approach aims to reduce the repetitive task of manually entering counseling notes into the system after returning to the office, allowing officials to focus more on crisis counseling and case management by shortening the time spent searching for eligibility and support details across various welfare programs.
In this initiative, Gyeonggi Province, along with Jeonnam Gwangju Metropolitan City and Chungcheongbuk-do, was selected as one of three metropolitan governments. Gyeonggi Province will operate a collaborative system to share project progress and feedback from public officials and residents with the Gyeonggi Welfare Foundation and the five participating cities.
Suwon City will test an administrative model that responds to a large population and welfare demand, while Hwaseong City will implement a welfare and integrated care linkage model reflecting the characteristics of a region that includes both new towns and rural areas. Pyeongtaek, Siheung, and Osan will also apply counseling and on-site support functions based on their respective demographic structures and welfare delivery systems.
Earlier this year, in February, the Ministry of Health and Welfare unveiled plans to introduce AI in the welfare sector, aiming to enhance proactive welfare responsiveness by supporting citizen counseling, benefit application guidance, crisis identification, and assisting public officials in data review and service linkage.
Kim Cheol-wan, head of the Gyeonggi Province Welfare Bureau, stated, "Even with the use of artificial intelligence in welfare administration, the final judgment on crisis households and benefit support must be responsibly made by on-site officials. We will rigorously verify the accuracy of counseling, protect personal information, and ensure that necessary support for residents is not omitted or misdirected during the testing process, establishing safe operational standards."
Meanwhile, during the pilot program running until the end of the year, Gyeonggi Province will assess operational challenges, including counseling accuracy, user convenience, time-saving effects for public officials, and personal information protection, and will refine AI functions and work procedures based on the results to explore the potential for expanding welfare administration services.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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