South Korea\'s Finance and Economy Ministry held its second procurement policy committee meeting of the year on Tuesday and approved measures including rationalising public construction bidding, improving systems identified through national contract dispute cases and conducting corrective inspections of self-ordering agencies. The package also targets recurring disputes over whether contract prices can be adjusted when public software specifications or work scopes change, by clarifying design-change grounds and strengthening procedural obligations for ordering agencies.

South Korea’s software industry says domestic rules and ordering practices remain stuck in the system integration era despite the rapid spread of AI. Speakers at a digital policy forum called for urgent reforms, citing public and financial-sector network separation, a labour-input pricing system and service-centric public procurement as barriers. Participants urged a shift to logical security, support for token costs and faster procedures, and called for value-based pricing that reflects computing and infrastructure costs.