The Ministry of Interior and Safety announced Wednesday it is recruiting members for a "Public Evaluation Panel" to gather direct user feedback on the usability and design of major government mobile services.
Applications will be accepted from Thursday through Aug. 28. Any citizen aged 19 or older who can use the internet and a smartphone is eligible to apply.
The Public Evaluation Panel has operated annually since 2023 to broaden public participation in improving government services. Those selected this year will serve for three months, from September through November.
As public use of government services has shifted to mobile platforms, the ministry plans to focus the evaluation on mobile services starting this year.
In response to South Korea's entry into super-aged society status, the ministry will break down the previously consolidated "60 and older" age bracket into separate "60s" and "70 and older" groups, and expand the share of visually impaired participants — including those who are fully blind and those with low vision.
Alongside this, participants who demonstrate particularly diligent engagement will be selected as a separate "in-depth evaluation panel" and interviewed in detail about specific inconveniences they encountered and their suggestions for improvement.
The evaluation will cover mobile apps operated by 49 central government agencies; agencies without dedicated apps will have their mobile websites assessed instead.
The findings will be shared with each agency to inform improvements to mobile service design and functionality.
Hwang Gyu-cheol, director general of the ministry's AI Government Bureau, said the panel offers citizens "a valuable opportunity to candidly convey the difficulties they experience while using public mobile services firsthand and to take part in improving them." He added that by capturing a wider range of voices this year — including those of citizens in their 70s and beyond — he hopes the panel's feedback will serve as "a solid foundation for building public mobile services that anyone can use easily and conveniently."
Details on the number of participants to be recruited by age group and the full evaluation schedule are available in the public notice posted on the Ministry of Interior and Safety website and the National Information Society Agency website.
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