Sustainable Disaster and Safety Management of Government: Integrated Disaster and Safety Budget System in Korea

Abstract

The budget for disaster and safety management can be characterized as a large-scale public asset in which the government has a significant role. However, this budget has been managed in a somewhat scattered and inconsistent manner by different government ministries, until the Sewol ferry incident in Korea 2014. After the Sewol incident, the Ministry of Public Safety and Security has introduced a prior consultation system for budget allocation in the field of disaster and safety management, so that the budget can be reviewed in a holistic manner, effectively managed, and invested according to agreeable priorities. This study introduces the prior consultation system for the budget in disaster and safety management, which has been implemented since 2015, analyzes budget allocation procedures, and provides possible solutions to improve the current status of the prior consultation system for classification and prioritization. (1) The issues that were found in the budget plans for the fiscal years of 2016 to 2017 are, firstly, unclear classification criteria that made it hard to differentiate much more disaster-related programs and projects from less-related ones. Secondly, investment priorities of projects and programs for disaster and safety management are controversial, due to the lack of objective standards and procedures. To firmly settle down the prior consultation system, several possible solutions to these two main issues are suggested. (2) To improve actual budget classification, the current classification system needs to be reviewed at first, and social issues will be analyzed to be included as a criterion and, finally, authors will propose additional criteria and items based on the Disaster and Safety Management Framework Act. In order to improve prioritization procedures for budget allocation, disaster damage and loss are compiled to find implications and other related prioritization practices, such as prioritization in natural disaster-prone area improvement programs, which need to be analyzed to provide suggestions on improvement in prioritization. Through the proposed improvement of the classification system, projects that are not related to disaster safety are not included in the disaster safety project. Projects that are deeply related to disaster safety can be further explored. It is also recommended that an investment direction be established in consideration of damage characteristics through the investment priority improvement plan, and that qualitative assessment criteria should be considered in the criteria for similar projects, and weights should be required. The improvement measures derived can be used as follows: the scale can be clearly identified by clarifying the subject of the disaster safety budget. This gives a sense of where investment is lacking, and where it is sufficient. Investment priority is reviewed in a variety of ways, preventing budgetary bias in advance. As a result, these two improvements enable efficient operation of the disaster safety budget.