"Focused Discussion on City Issues"... Gwangyang Holds First 'Expanded New Year's Kickoff Meeting'

Reducing Conventional Work Reports, Shifting to Brainstorming Sessions

Gwangyang City, the Gwangju-Jeonnam Special Integrated Municipality, announced on the 11th that it held the first expanded New Year's kickoff meeting of the 9th civilian administration on the 10th in the City Hall Citizen Hall, attended by all senior officials.

The expanded New Year's kickoff meeting, newly reorganized after Mayor Park Seong-hyeon took office, is now operated by drastically reducing repetitive and unnecessary work reports. Instead, each month, one core topic related to the city's key administrative issues is chosen, and all departments work together to find solutions through brainstorming sessions.

Expanded New Year's Meeting of Gwangyang City held on the 10th. Provided by Gwangyang City

The August expanded New Year's kickoff meeting focused on the theme of "Improving Integrity."

During the meeting, after an integrity pledge ceremony and a report on the analysis and improvement strategies for integrity, ideas discovered by all departments through prior brainstorming sessions were visualized and shared as key projects. Three main ideas for focused promotion were then selected via QR voting by the participants.

In particular, the selected ideas were further brainstormed under the leadership of the mayor. Rather than ending as simple suggestions, concrete action plans were discussed to develop them into actual administrative policies.

Through this reorganization, Gwangyang City is transforming the expanded New Year's kickoff meeting from a "reporting session" to a "collaborative problem-solving meeting." Officials will actively inject their on-site experiences and know-how into the policymaking process to discover more effective initiatives, while also establishing a culture of collaboration that brings together wisdom across departments around a single city governance goal.

In addition, outstanding ideas generated at the meeting will undergo further review by relevant departments before being actively incorporated into actual administrative policies. The city will continuously monitor the progress and outcomes to drive substantial change in administration.

Gwangyang Mayor Park Seong-hyeon said, "Today's brainstorming session marks the starting point of the 'administrative transformation,' one of the five major transformations I have proposed. We will move beyond the repeated monthly work reports and meetings bound by past conventions, turning the meetings into forums where we tackle on-site problems and work together to find solutions."

He continued, "As mayor, I will personally serve as the control tower for the core ideas directly proposed and selected by the staff, and will lead the way in establishing a culture of integrity that befits Gwangyang's stature as the industrial capital of Korea."

He added, "Since many good ideas have emerged from the efforts of each department, I ask that not only the selected key ideas but all opinions proposed by departments are actively considered and promoted so that they can be adopted as real policies."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.