The procedure makes our project innovative. Usually regulatory reform has been conducted in a rigid top-down manner, but our project has a bottom-up and flexible approach. The competition begins by receiving several cases from 17 local governments through open recruitment. The first screening is jointly reviewed by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and local governments to select twice the number of final selections. In the second examination, the cases selected in the first examination are reviewed by experts from academia and research institutes to determine excellent cases. The first screening procedure, which is carried out several times with the help of private experts, ensures the excellence of the case and the fairness of the competition. The spread of regulatory reform through competition between local governments creates new competition and leads to a virtuous cycle structure.

The competition has been held every year since 2018, and a total of 55 best practices were selected by 2021. It plans to select 16 new cases this year as well in 2022. Specifically, cases of regulatory reform are invited and selected in the fields of local economy, corporate difficulties, resident life, and benchmarking. Commendation and financial incentives are provided to local governments selected for best practices. In addition, best practices are published and distributed in e-books and paper books for publicity. On 2022, the second round of expert review had already been completed by September. The progress of the competition is compared and evaluated as a reference for the following year.

We cooperate with local governments and civil society. This project works closely with local governments to draw cases, support information exchanges between local governments, and cooperates with local governments by providing financial incentives. In addition, the direction and tone of regulatory innovation are checked by participating researchers and civil society in the process of selecting best practices.

The primary beneficiary of this project is the local government. Local governments receive financial incentives and can interact with other local governments and learn their best practices. The secondary beneficiary is the national government because regulatory innovation policies can be effectively established in local governments. The final beneficiaries are citizens and businesses. Regulatory innovation increases the autonomy of the private sector and promotes corporate vitality.

The results and effects of the local regulatory reform best practice competition are as follows. First, excellent regulatory innovation cases implemented in each region can be confirmed at once. By effectively sharing best practices so that they can be benchmarked by other local governments, unnecessary costs incurred in policy development or information search processes are reduced. Second, it contributes to the nationwide spread of best practices for regulatory innovation. Local governments can reduce trial and error because they innovate based on cases that have already been verified. Furthermore, it provides opportunities for better regulatory innovation by developing existing cases. Third, innovation tailored to consumers is possible through a bottom-up regulatory innovation method. Unnecessary and unreasonable regulations can be confirmed from the perspective of companies and residents, not from the perspective of regulatory suppliers.

Excellent cases selected in the past may not be suitable at present due to the development of science and technology or changes in the administrative environment. In this case, inappropriate cases are benchmarked, or it renders the effect of the competition short-term. This problem is feared to intensify as best practices accumulate. So far, the competition has been held five times, but it is necessary to prepare countermeasures for the future. To this end, the procedure for reviewing existing best practices was planned. When innovations selected as best practices are no longer implemented for some reason, the local government is requested to notify that fact. In addition, when it is confirmed that the existing one contradicts the new one, it is no longer introduced as a best practice and an explanation regarding why it is no longer a best practice is provided.

It is important for local governments to trust that the procedures and evaluations of the competition will be carried out fairly. Due to the nature of the competition, the belief that fair competition will be achieved is the most important success condition for the project. The reason why local governments have steadily participated during the five competitions is that the selection process has been transparently disclosed and the evaluation has been objectively conducted. Selection criteria and schedules were shared with local governments from the beginning, and the evaluation was double checked through experts in the public and private sectors.

Regulatory reform will be dramatically activated if competitions similar to those of best practices for local regulatory innovation are held in countries around the world. If vast amounts of regulatory innovation cases are accumulated and shared through various institutions and governments around the world, it will be easier to innovate the public sector by using them by other institutions and governments.

In order to provide a sufficient amount of excellent cases to local governments, competitions need to be held continuously over a long period of time. In order to find suitable cases for local governments to benchmark, good cases must be accumulated sufficiently. The competition is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, but it needs to be continued in the future. The most important thing for this is the leader's strong belief and willingness to innovate the public sector through regulatory innovation. The patience of a leader is needed to wait until various regulatory innovations can be shared and spread nationwide.