Complainants can prevent certain government ministries or departments from dealing with their complaints.

When filing complaints with e-People, complainants can choose “Exclusion Request Service,” where they can keep certain government ministries and divisions from handling their complaints. When complainants apply for this service, their complaints are dealt with by superior or other agencies and organizations.

The ACRC said that when complaints are about certain public official and the division to which the public official belongs is designated as competent body to deal with such complaint, there is a possibility that the one who ends up getting the short end of the stick are the complainants themselves. To overcome this problem, the ACRC plans to implement Exclusion Request Service.

Exclusion Request Service is a system where an official in charge of complaint handling decides whether or not complaints filed by certain complainants fearing getting disadvantaged are transferred to certain divisions for resolution which are the target of Exclusion Request Service.

An official from the ACRC said “Thanks to Exclusion Request Service, accuracy in assigning complaints to the right agencies will be enhanced and complainants will be happier because they can have their complaints handled by agencies they want. Exclusion Request Service will be operated on a pilot basis for one month (December) and problems found will be taken care of before Exclusion Request Service is applied to all central government agencies.”

e-People is an online communication channel for the people where they can file all sorts of complaints, make proposals and discuss policies. It is linked with all administrative agencies (including central and local governments, and Korean legations overseas), as well as with the judiciary and 14 major state-run enterprises.