Research Background
Information systems support the use of various information, including statistical data, for establishing, executing, evaluating, and feeding back agricultural and rural policies. Although there are active efforts to study the statistical information used for policy, the studies on information systems are relatively few. Moreover, while the central government can have abundant sets of statistics and information systems that it can utilize, the local governments have relatively insufficient useful information. The purpose of this study is to analyze various information systems, including the statistical data, for agricultural policy and present the development direction. Moreover, it intends to present the ways to produce statistical information that the local governments can use for agricultural policies.

Research Methodology
For the statistical data used for agricultural policies and their utilization, we referred to and restructured the first-year study. To analyze the status of the agricultural and rural information systems, we summarized the information systems that we can search over the Internet and analyzed their characteristics. We selected notable information systems and invited their developers or administrators for workshops. Moreover, we asked them to write articles about critical contents and the development direction of their information systems. We analyzed the “Statistics of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs” for the information used by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) and the “Guidelines for Establishing the Development Plan for Agriculture, Rural, and Food Industry” for the information utilized for agricultural policies by local governments. We also analyzed the raw data of agricultural corporation surveys to examine the status of corporations in each local municipality. The number of agricultural employment in each local municipality was estimated by aggregating and analyzing statistical data such as comprehensive agricultural survey, farming survey, and agricultural corporation survey. The agricultural production of each item, added value, and income in three metropolitan governments and one local municipality were estimated by aggregating and analyzing the agriculture and fisheries survey by the Statistics Korea, the local income data by the Rural Development Administration, and other data.

Findings
The budget for agriculture and food informatization in 2019 was KRW 36.9 billion, which was only 0.2% of the total budget of the MAFRA, but has been increasing at an annual average of 3% since 2013. As the MAFRA’s budget has grown by an annual average of 1% in the past five years, it means that the portion of the budget for informatization has increased. The budgets for informatization projects implemented as sub-projects of MAFRA’s financial projects are not categorized as the informatization budgets. As such, more budgets are allocated on informatization than the official figure for what is categorized as the information projects of commercial projects of MAFRA indicates.
Agriculture and rural information support systems can be divided into statistical data, information service, and administrative informatization types. The statistical data includes the approved statistics provided by the Statistics Korea and the unapproved statistics generated through the administrative processes carried out by related agencies. Regarding the statistical data, there is a wide range of national-level data, but the metropolitan-level data are relatively insufficient, and the municipal-level data are even more insufficient. The information services can be divided into comprehensive information services and specialized information services. The comprehensive information services generally target farmers or the general public, while the specialized information services are mostly operated to meet the policy needs of the MAFRA. However, there is a shortage of information services that can help the agricultural policies of local municipalities. The main purpose of administrative informatization is to digitalize the agency administration, and some information systems are publicly disclosed for auxiliary projects or the projects that the public and private sectors participate jointly.
The “Statistics of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs” published by the MAFRA annually is organized of the basic statistics, agricultural and rural statistics, food statistics, and foreign statistics. It provides the macroeconomic conditions, various statistics related to agriculture and rural development, and information for the comparison with foreign agriculture and rural development. Although the rural administrative officials in local municipalities utilize the statistical to examine the current status, they complain of a shortage of information that reflects the local characteristics and the information other than the production statistics. The analysis of the statistics that the local municipalities can use for agricultural policies showed a high reliance on administrative data compared to the MAFRA.
Enhancing the agricultural and rural information support system requires the MAFRA to establish an information analysis system to enable integrated management of agricultural and rural information systems, establish user-centered information access systems, and analyze big data. From the position of local municipalities, it is necessary to implement the information support system to help the agricultural affairs of local municipalities, expand the delivery of agricultural information related to the municipality, and broaden the local statistical data. The fundamental measure to broaden the statistical data is to restructure the statistical system to expand the statistical data that the metropolitan governments and the local municipalities can utilize. However, such enhancement of statistical systems requires institutional reformation and securing financial resources, and it is difficult to expect improvement in the short term. Production of statistical information mathematically derived from existing statistics can help local municipalities to use them for agricultural policies.
Aggregating the raw data of agricultural corporation in the municipality level can provide the reference data such as the number of agricultural corporations in each municipality, business type of agricultural corporation, sales size, and the number of employees. The full survey data can produce reliable statistical information by aggregating the original data in a relatively straightforward manner. However, it is not easy to obtain reliable data by a simple aggregation method with sample surveys. For example, the raw data of regional employment survey can be utilized to estimate the agricultural employment in each municipality. In that case, aggregating the sample survey data can omit some values since the sample design does not consider the municipality level. As a way to solve the problem, the raw data such as total agricultural survey, farming survey, and corporation survey can be aggregated to produce the relatively reliable agricultural employment data in each municipality. Regarding agricultural production, the production amount for each item is provided at the national level but not at the municipality level. Aggregating the unit price of each item of regional income of the RDA and the production data of agricultural production statistics can calculate the production of each item and estimate the production by classification. Since the agricultural business, employment, production, and income are important information for agricultural policies of local municipalities, using reliable data derived mathematically can help local municipalities make agricultural policies.


Researchers: Gouk Seungyong, Ma Sangjin, Lee Douyoung, Lee Hyungyong, Kim Taeyoung
Research period: 2019. 1. ~ 2019. 12.
E-mail address: gouksy@krei.re.kr