Research Innovation Activities

■Pursuing Excellence in Research Outcomes

With the intent to produce research reports sig-nificantly contributing to academia and the gov-ernment, which will lead and support policy-making, and tackle pending policy issues of the government as well as to explore policy agendas, KRIHS endeavors to explore and select research projects to carry out through public subscription and based on opinions of the people from various fields. In line with this, KRIHS introduced the Project Management System(PMS) in 2007 and tried to implement a scientific and rigorous man-agement of the research projects. Also, KRIHS introduced a 4-stage process of deliberation and assessment of the reports in order to produce quality research reports. In accordance to this, KRIHS explored and conducted a total of 29 basic research projects in 2007 that complied with the KRIHS vision, its 2007 research objectives, inter-nal and exterinter-nal circumstances and the social demand.

■Distribution and Dissemination of Research and Project Accomplishments

In an effort to disseminate research accomplish-ments by means of high-tech tools for informati-zation, KRIHS established and operated the Research Accomplishments Dissemination System by employing ‘trend-type techniques' including Japanese translation of the KRIHS webpage, movies, web-mails, RDF Site Summary (RSS) and Internet cafes. In particular, KRIHS expanded the contents of the specialized KRIHS webpage, the

UBIN, by 25%, or a total of 2,350 cases, and established a blind-friendly webpage for the blind users, and a child-friendly website for the chil-dren. In addition, KRIHS registered with the web-page its entire research outcomes totaling 318 upon production, keeping the database up-to-date, along with the outcomes of a total of 55 consigned research under the agreement with the ordering party. KRIHS conducted a training pro-gram for the regular users of the Institute Knowl-edge Inventory System(IKIS) twice in 2007 in order to activate the use of and publicize the IKIS.

In the meantime, KRIHS established and oper-ated the Real-time Distribution System of the Research Findings for the relevant institutions and professionals. In addition, it started consign-ing its research reports to nine bookstores nation-wide in an effort to enhance regional experts' access to KRIHS research outcomes. Also, KRIHS maintained a database of a total of 688 relevant institutions and experts overseas in 2007, and tried to expand a customized information net-work for different experts by signing an agree-ment on information provision with domestic institutions including the National Assembly E-library and the National Archives of Korea.

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■International Collaboration Activities KRIHS concluded MOUs with one domestic and 5 overseas institutions in 2007, increasing the insti-tutions under research collaboration agreement to 26 domestic and 27 institutions from 11 countries.

Of those carried out in 2007, a total of 19 research projects involved overseas experts includ-ing Watanabe Sunichi(University of Tokyo). Also, KRIHS invited world-renowned scholars including Harry W. Richardson(University of Southern Cali-fornia) to seminars 13 times throughout the year, and held a total of 9 international conferences including the International Seminar on the GIS titled, ‘Collaborative GIS toward the Geospatial Information Society'. With these and other efforts, KRIHS endeavored to strengthen its research

capacity and academic exchange and cooperation with overseas experts in 2007.

KRIHS provided a total of three training pro-grams for government officials of developing countries under the sponsorship of the Korea International Cooperation Agency in 2007, with a view to support the participating countries in nurturing human resources in the field of territor-ial development. In addition, KRIHS tried to transfer its expertise and knowledge on land development and systematic method of land management to the Egyptian government, fur-thering exchange and cooperation with Egypt.

Lastly, KRIHS hosted two regular international workshops in 2007: one with Zhejing University of China on land policy, and the other with Japanese experts in the field of construction eco-nomics. The two parties of each of the work-shops, which take place on a yearly basis, take turns in hosting the events.

■Promotion of Internal Communication

With the intent to encourage information sharing and the culture of ‘candid communication', the KRIHS Newsletter is distributed to the entire staff every Monday, thus contributing to unifying the

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directions of KRIHS management and to consensus building. In 2007, KRIHS strived to enhance ties among KRIHS members through various efforts such as installation of the ‘Opinions Box', a

‘hotline' between the employees with the President, and formal and informal meetings among employ-ees of same staff levels and among those from the same division. Also, KRIHS expanded the opportu-nities for mutual understanding and education supporting workshops for research innovation, special lectures by external experts, seminars and group meetings for research capacity building, etc.

KRIHS organized the ‘Vision KRIHS’, a meeting of the representatives of all staff levels and pro-vided a venue for raising issues targeted at grad-ual development of KRIHS, and presenting the solutions. In addition, KRIHS streamlined existing meetings into three: a daily ‘Check-up Meeting’, a weekly ‘Division Heads Meeting for Management Innovation' and a monthly ‘Research and Man-agement Innovation Meeting'.

■KRIHS Value Establishment

KRIHS strives to play its due role as a national research institute, and practice the spirit of Noblesse Oblige. KRIHS has signed an MOU with a small farming village on direct links between the rural producers and KRIHS employees, which is beneficial to both the parties. KRIHS actively participated in volunteer work in 2007, which includes the visits to the Anyang Hospital for the Elderly every month. In particular, KRIHS volun-teered to clean up the villages in Taean which were devastated by large oil spill in December 2007. It plans to consistently implement

environ-mental monitoring, and conduct a research on restoration of the regional communities affected by the disaster. Lastly, KRIHS endeavored to explore and implement activities to contribute to the society by employing expertise unique to KRIHS through such activities as the promotion of the pilot Livable City Creation project in col-laboration with regional civic groups and local governments.

With the intent to explore joint research pro-jects with internal and external experts, which is aimed at balanced territorial development and creation of new values for the territory, KRIHS conducted large collaborative research projects of various fields including the ‘Study on Decentral-ization and Power Devolution', ‘Study on Territo-rial Amenities and Quality of People's Lives', and

‘Study on Public Investment Impact Assessment

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accomplish-ments and apply them to the research, KRIHS held contests, special lectures and workshops throughout the year including the Innovation Competition Exhibition. Lastly, in 2007, KRIHS expanded the Human Settlements Writing Con-test, which is intended to arouse territorial values among elementary school students, and tried to raise awareness of the territory among children.

■Making System of Research and Administration Management More Effective

In 2007, KRIHS introduced full competition into the selection of projects for basic research, thus creating an aggressive and creative environment for research implementation. KRIHS spent research grants amounting to 5.1million KW on a total of 24 distinguished researches, thus provid-ing motives to the researchers to improve the quality of their research. As a result of various efforts to enhance research capacity including expansion of collaborative research with domestic and foreign experts and research institutions, and introduction of up-to-date information and cut-ting-edge research techniques, in 2007, the domestic collaborative research projects increased 3.0% compared to the previous year with interna-tional joint research projects rising 375%.

■Declaration and Practice of Transparent Management

In order to practice transparent and ethical man-agement, KRIHS has opened the entire

informa-tion on management to the public through the

‘Open to the Pubic' of the Ministry of Planning and Budget since October 2005. In December 2006, KRIHS concluded an agreement on integrity with the Chairman of the National Research Council for Economics, Humanities and Social Sciences followed by the Statement of Integrity in March 2007, which aroused the sense of ethics among KRIHS members. In order to practice transparent research, KRIHS provided a special lecture on plagiarism, and also checked existing research reports for plagiarism.

In October 2007, KRIHS established the high-tech Project Management System(PMS) with a view to build a system for individual manage-ment, reporting and approval on research activi-ties, and obtain transparency and objectivity of accounting practices.

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In October 2007, KRIHS restructured its existing project management system(PMS) from the first-generation process-oriented system towards a research accomplishments-oriented one. The major contents of the restructuring include trans-formation to a PMS focusing on research accom-plishments, introduction of a new electronic doc-ument system, and budget control on the basis of the Budget, Finance and Accounting System.

Since the late 1990's when paper documents were gradually transformed to digital ones, most research institutions of Korea has introduced a PMS linked to a groupware system. KRIHS joined the trends and fully digitized the approval process along with the PMS in 2002, thus enhancing pro-ject management effectiveness. This is when the KOALA System was first introduced, with which most of the research-related tasks and adminis-trative tasks were digitized, and accordingly, work productivity has improved over the entire process of a research implementation. However, the system was incomplete since the key area, the Budget, Finance and Accounting System, was excluded from the system. In order to address the problem, KRIHS has introduced the

second-gen-eration PMS, and by connecting the Budget, Finance and Accounting System to the existing PMS, it has completed the KRIHS PMS and the Integrated Administrative System.

The newly upgraded PMS is primarily focused on the transformation of the process-oriented PMS to a system for the management of a project history and project performance evaluation. The entire process of the project performance is processed online including drawing up the pre-liminary research plan, budget planning and holding steering committee meetings.

Also, the entire process of the deliberations on the research is fully digitized, thus securing delib-eration transparency and objectivity. Coupled with this, the system is expected to greatly enhance project history management and utiliza-tion of research materials, since various materials related to the research, which are produced through public hearings, seminars and meetings, can be collected and managed in a systematic and consistent manner.

In terms of integration of the electronic approval process and the Integrated Administrative System into the new PMS, there has been a considerable