AI-based local tax audit system wins gold; city to incorporate top proposals into policy

Ulsan city officials pose at last year's civil servant proposal awards ceremony. The city has selected nine outstanding proposals from its 2026 competition for incorporation into municipal policy. [Ulsan City]
Ulsan city officials pose at last year's civil servant proposal awards ceremony. The city has selected nine outstanding proposals from its 2026 competition for incorporation into municipal policy. [Ulsan City]

Ulsan has selected nine outstanding proposals from its 2026 civil servant suggestion competition and will incorporate them into city policy.

The competition drew 63 submissions received between May last year and April this year. Working-level departments and outside experts evaluated the entries, and the Ulsan Metropolitan Citizens' Initiative Screening Committee conducted a final review. Nine proposals were recognized: one gold, one silver, two bronze, two encouragement prizes and three merit awards.

The gold award — the top honor — went to a joint proposal by Son Won-ik, a senior administrator, and Lee Eun-jeong, an administrative officer, both from the city's tax administration division. Their proposal was titled "Building a Standard Model for Intelligent Local Tax Audits Based on a Large Language Model to Overcome the Data Dead Cross."

The proposal calls for introducing small large language model (sLLM) and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology into local tax audits, converting what had been a largely manual process into an AI-driven system. Evaluators recognized it as an innovative model capable of shortening audit periods and improving the efficiency of tax administration.

The silver award went to Kim Du-han, a fire lieutenant, and Cha Gyeong-geun, a fire captain, both from the disaster response division of the Ulsan Fire Headquarters. Their proposal outlined an IoT-based integrated management system for monitoring water reserves aboard fire vehicles, using water-level sensors and IoT technology to check remaining water in real time and enable more efficient water management at disaster scenes.

Two bronze awards were presented: one to Park Jin-cheol and Kwon Sang-u, administrative officers at the Cheonsang Water Purification Plant under the Waterworks Headquarters, for their proposal to install emergency jump hoses to secure a stable supply of sodium hypochlorite; and one to Yun Hyeok, a fire lieutenant, and Ye Hwa-yong, a fire sergeant, from the disaster response division of Ulsan East Fire Station, for a plan to introduce waterproofing equipment sets to secure a golden-hour response in hard-to-access apartment complexes.

Ulsan plans to recommend the gold, silver and bronze award proposals to the Ministry of Interior and Safety as candidates for its national outstanding proposal program and will reflect all winning proposals in city policy.


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