Current status and challenges on the big data of public sector in Korea

The ICT (information and communication technology) paradigm shift, including the burgeoning use of mobile, SNS, and smart devices, has resulted in an explosion of data along with lifestyle changes. We have thus arrived at the age of big data. In the meantime, a number of difficulties have arisen in terms of cost or on the technical side with respect to the use of large quantities of data. However, big data has begun to receive attention with the advent of efficient big data technologies such as Hadoop. Big data is recognized as the 21st century digital resource and new driving force. The governments of the United States, Japan, and other countries around the world have already been actively promoting big data in their national policies. Korea is promotingbig data actively in the public and private sectors according to National Issues of the Creative Economy and the Government 3.0. In this respect, the Korean government published the "Big Data Industry Development Strategy" in December 2013 and began supporting the use of big data in earnest. This article introduces the status and policy of international and domestic utilization of big data in the public sector. In addition, it describes the challenges in terms of technology, human resources, and data for the vitalization of big data collection and analysis in Korea.