Cogniterm joins government-wide AX consulting kickoff: "Public AX needs data standardization and AI collaboration design first"

Digital Daily, April 17, 2026

Private-sector experts discuss how to make public-sector AX succeed at the panel of the government-wide AX consulting kickoff, held on the afternoon of April 16 at the Danuri Call Center of the Korea Institute for Healthy Family in Mapo-gu, Seoul. [Photo: Ahyeon Gu]

The following is an English summary of the original Korean article.

As the Korean government moves to bring AI transformation (AX) to every ministry, private-sector experts at the kickoff of the government-wide AX (AI transformation) consulting program on April 16 agreed on one message: for AX projects to succeed, data standardization and the design of how AI and people work together must come first. The panel brought together companies and experts including 42Maru, Superb AI, Twelve Labs, PwC Consulting, Cogniterm, Persona AI and the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA).

CEO Jwayeon Jeong of Cogniterm said that a 90% failure rate for AX projects “is actually happening,” pointing to staff’s limited understanding of AI as a major cause. “An AI model is only built to the level the modeler understands,” he said, noting that when company employees took the first-round accountant exam they scored 15 to 20 points, and the AI they built scored the same. He named non-standardized documents and work processes in public institutions as the biggest obstacle to AI adoption, stressing that the first task is to sort out how to standardize the work itself rather than to acquire AI knowledge.

Other panelists also put data and collaboration at the center. Jinwoo Jeong, Director of Business Development at Twelve Labs, described infrastructure and then data as the first steps of AX, urging that fragmented public-sector data be tied to a common foundation and that cloud resources be used at least for technology validation. Hyundong Lee, Vice President of Superb AI, said that in practice AI tends to surface previously invisible work and raise overall capacity, and that building data governance, security and feedback cycles, and designing how staff collaborate with AI after adoption, decides success.

Donghwan Kim, CEO of 42Maru, called for AX that citizens can actually feel; Yuhyun Park of PwC Consulting noted that public and private AX aim at different goals and pledged consulting geared toward better lives and administrative innovation; and attorney Doyoung Song of Jipyong LLC suggested opening the AI infrastructure and data built through the program to the private sector so new public services can emerge.

Yoonkyu Park, President of the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), described the consulting as the first step toward a government-wide AX one-stop support center to be expanded next year. Jemyung Ryu, Second Vice Minister of Science and ICT, said AI budgets had more than tripled from the previous year despite a tight overall budget, reflecting AI’s place as a top national priority.

Source: Digital Daily, reporter Ahyeon Gu ([email protected])

Original article: Read the article on Digital Daily (Korean)