The local government heads elected in the "June 3 local elections" are officially taking office. Local administration must now move beyond the slogans and promises of the campaign to rigorously design a roadmap for implementation over the next four years. What new government heads need is not administration preoccupied with short-term results, but a feasible vision and system of priorities to break through the region's crisis-stricken reality. In the face of population decline and regional economic stagnation, trial and error can become a heavy burden on local communities.
The aspirations of citizens confirmed in the last election were not grand ideologies or political rhetoric. They were improvements in quality of life closely tied to daily living: tailored jobs that revive stagnant regional economies, public transportation infrastructure that eases daily fatigue, and a tightly woven welfare net that wards off the threats of illness and old age. The launch of new local governments must begin with a practical vision that concretely embraces residents' wearisome daily lives.
The first task in realizing this is convergent innovation that breaks down administrative partitions and crosses barriers between departments. The "department-by-department fragmentation" of budget execution, a chronic ill of conventional bureaucracy, and supplier-centered expediency produce only every-man-for-himself administration. New government heads must now serve as institutional mediators who coordinate inter-departmental selfishness and link scattered regional resources. The integrated education, care, and housing package of Hwacheon County in Gangwon Province and the early childhood education-childcare integration innovation case of Yangju City in Gyeonggi Province offer significant lessons. Amid the crisis of population decline and regional collapse, local governments' survival strategy must start from convergent thinking that reassembles public resources from the consumer's perspective.
The second key is a paradigm shift in infrastructure. Government heads must break free from the lure of building hollow landmarks such as luxurious government buildings or empty large-scale cultural performance halls, which are easily packaged as electoral achievements. This does not mean large-scale infrastructure investment is unnecessary. But what local communities now need more urgently is the living foundation that sustains residents' daily lives, rather than flashy hardware. We should pay attention to the small but powerful innovations of Seosan and Jeungpyeong, which nurtured neighborhood independent bookstores and small libraries as the capillaries of local culture and restored polluted streams into ecological walking trails. Japan's "community-based integrated care system" responding to a super-aged society and Gwangju Metropolitan City's "Gwangju-style integrated care model" are also important reference cases. Concentrating budget and capacity on micro-level "humanware" rather than massive facilities is the direction of sustainable local administration.
The ultimate driving force that completes every vision and roadmap lies not at the desk of the government office, but in co-production with citizens. Raising procedural efficiency through digital administrative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) is a basic step. But the realization of policy gains life within close interaction between administrative officials and citizens. The case of a solidarity of 4,000 volunteers protecting the lives of elderly people living alone shows that citizens have evolved beyond being beneficiaries of administration into co-producers who sustain their local communities. Public-private governance that incorporates citizens' wisdom into policy, based on the government head's leadership in public values, must be the final destination of the roadmap.
The success or failure of local administration should be judged not by how large the facilities built were, but by how much safer and more comfortable residents' days have become. Life-centered innovation may appear small, but it is the change residents feel first and a realistic strategy that underpins the sustainability of local communities. I hope that the government heads beginning new terms will take a living-centered innovation roadmap as their starting point and achieve resident-centered integration and development of their local communities.
