Seoul opens single portal for 13,000-plus public services

Residents looking to search and book public services across Seoul — from sports facilities and cultural courses to children's activity programs — can do so through the Seoul Metropolitan Government's integrated public service reservation system.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government on Saturday, the platform consolidates more than 13,000 public services offered annually by the city government, autonomous districts and affiliated agencies — covering sports facilities, educational courses and cultural experiences — allowing users to browse, reserve and pay in one place.

Finding the right service is set to become even easier. Starting next year, the city will introduce an AI chatbot to help residents locate services that match their needs. Users will be able to enter natural-language queries — such as "weekend activities to do with my kids" or "a tennis court near my home" — and the chatbot will return relevant results, replacing the current manual browsing approach with personalized search.

The system also sends text message alerts two days before registration opens and two days before a deadline closes for any service a user has bookmarked. For high-demand facilities such as tennis courts and park golf courses, an anti-macro system blocks fraudulent reservations; from January through August this year alone, it detected and blocked about 3.35 million macro access attempts.

"Going forward, we will use digital technologies including AI to help residents easily find the services they need and build a public service reservation environment in Seoul where everyone can access them fairly," said Jeong Yeong-jun, director of the Seoul Metropolitan Government's Digital City Bureau.