Jamaican Delegation Visits the NEC!

One of the advantages of working in the Administration and International Affairs Division is meeting people from all walks of life and from a wide variety of backgrounds. This week we welcomed a truly unique delegation to the NEC from the beautiful country of Jamaica, who were in Korea as part of knowledge sharing on resident registration.  We are lucky enough to have a fairly steady schedule of visits to the NEC that our Division is responsible for and we work with a wide variety of partners, and this gives us an excellent chance to tell you all about the work we do outside of the election period and our major international events.

Our division often gets requests to arrange meetings between election officials here at the NEC and partners from around the world who are in Korea for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes international organizations related to elections and democracy on fact-finding or training missions come to our office to meet senior officials, sometimes other Korean governmental organizations bring international visitors on their own related programs to hear about what we do or ask specific questions, and sometimes other election management bodies arrange to meet our senior officials to learn more about elections here and strengthen our partnerships.

In this case, the Ministry of the Interior here in Korea was hosting the 2017 Knowledge Sharing Workshop on Resident Registration in Korea with a delegation of experts from Jamaica in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). They are here to exchange ideas with the Ministry on computerized resident registration systems and the 15-strong delegation included members from eGov Jamaica, the Register General’s Department, the Office of the Prime Minister and, most relevant for the NEC, the Electoral Commission of Jamaica.

When we organize this kind of meeting at the NEC, we have a set structure that we tailor to meet the demands of our guests. We usually open with welcoming remarks and an introductory video before moving to the most important part, the Q&A session with a senior official who can answer their questions. For out Jamaican delegates, Director General of the Planning and Coordination Department Song Bong-seop was our main representative and focused on answering their questions, which were mainly about the creation of the voters list here in Korea and our relationship with the resident registration system. We always find these discussions very interesting and productive, and this case was no different, with the session lasting nearly 40 minutes. Our discussions then end with an exchange of gifts in appreciation of our cooperation and in hope of further ties in the future.

Once the session is over we also visit the Commissioners meeting room to explain about the structure of our Commission further before ending the visit in our election experience room. Here, we demonstrate some of the election ICT equipment, and we usually tailor our demonstrations to the delegation as best as possible. For the resident registration focused team we spent a lot of the time talking about the integrated voters’ list server and equipment used to identify voters at early voting polling stations, a vital part of the Korean election system which generated a lot of interest from the team.

Of course, not visit to the NEC would be complete without a final photo outside our office for our delegates to remember their visit by. Lucky for the Jamaican team the weather was glorious sunshine and despite the heat everyone was looking their best! Usually this kind of meeting lasts two hours or so and these visits are invaluable to the NEC as it allows us to continue to exchange ideas and values with other partner countries, helping to spread ideas of democracy and beautiful elections worldwide

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Thank you to the wonderful Jamaican delegation, who engaged in some really interesting discussion and were keen to exchange ideas during their visit, and to the Ministry of Interior in Korea for arranging the meeting. We look forward to closer ties with the Electoral Commission of Jamaica in the future and we wish everyone a safe return back to the other side of the world.

Author: Luke Butcher, Administration and International Affairs Division.