As the Korean government expands the budget for national research and development, the need for an institute that deliberates, coordinates, and operates research development and its budget has increased. In response to these demands, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) was recently established. However, to achieve a creative economy, which is the economic system where value is based on novel imaginative qualities rather than the traditional resources of land, labor, and capital, more efficiently, fundamental research regarding the current state of the Korean national administration system of science and technology in Korea is required. Accordingly, this study first analyzes the function and organizational structure of the NSTC in Korea. Second, it investigates the current state of the NSTC in other countries. Finally, the study derives several implications for improving NSTC operation based on the benchmarking study and suggests an operational improvement plan for NSTC with respect to enhancement of function, operation of organization, human resource management, and improvement of the relationships between other departments. The study contributes to analyze the current state of the NSTC in Korea and science and technology (S&T) Councils in other major countries, systematically and in detail. In addition, based on benchmarking study, this study derived operational improvement of NSTC in Korea with four perspectives, including enhancement of function, operation of organization, human resource management, and improvement of the relationships between other departments.

The Korean government has been continuously conducting diverse national R&D programs to discover new growth engines. The Republic of Korea is one of the countries with the largest investment in national R&D, but its efficiency was relatively low. In response, this study established a framework to identify the characteristics and direction of outstanding R&D programs. In this study, the performance of the R&D programs was identified in the sub-program unit. The efficiency of the national R&D program was analyzed using the data envelopment analysis model through the outputs of the national R&D programs such as papers and patents. However, patent and paper output would take time to be realized. Therefore, this study also calculated the diversity index of R&D programs to identify their potential expected performance. This study applied the suggested framework in the electric vehicle fields, which is one of the core growth engines of South Korea. A list of outstanding programs was identified from the National Institute of Science and Technology Information (NTIS) data. Additionally, this study also discovered the main technology areas and their current issues of outstanding and brand-new R&D programs. These results could contribute to suggesting the policy direction to conduct high-performance national R&D programs.