The government's central computer system was up and running again on Monday following a debilitating three-day outage.
Last Friday, the Korean public was unable to obtain official documents or conduct other duties requiring certification as the system outage crippled the government’s civil service capabilities. People could not make real estate deals or receive bank loans, as they could not get resident registration papers or obtain self-verification.
Things could have been far worse if it had happened midweek.
It took the government 56 hours to restore the system. And officials still need to learn exactly what went wrong. They attributed the outage to a networking device related to self-certification, but admitted they did not know exactly which part of it went down and how. “Restoration of service was an urgent matter, and an investigation is underway,” a senior official said.
The three-day outage tainted Korea’s reputation as an IT powerhouse. Ironically, the incident occurred while a top official responsible for the system was abroad to promote the nation’s “excellent e-government system.”
It’s been restored for now, but the public still has many questions that need to be answered.
First, they cannot understand why it took so long to replace a broken device. Experts suspect there might be more reasons government officials do not know about or are reluctant to share with the public. Second, they see no reason why the government updated the hardware on a weekday instead of a weekend. Third, why was there no backup system?
What annoyed the public even more was the foot-dragging by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. The computer system went down even before government employees began work on Friday. However, it was close to the end of the workday when the ministry admitted the problem and notified the public by text message. Had private companies caused a similar incident, regulators would have rebuked and punished them. Officials said they only send messages during disasters. But the government's computer system outage constitutes a disaster in this tightly-wired era.
President Yoon Suk Yeol has vowed to make the best digital platform government in the world. It will issue all civil documents online and gather public data from local governments on the national platform. That might befit a country that placed third in the U.N.’s e-government ranking last year. It also explains why the administration increased the related outlay to 792 billion won ($616 million) next year despite a tight budget.
However, the latest mishap shows they focused more on beefing up the organization and on window dressing than on ensuring system stability.
There were early signs that appearance overshadowed substance in Korea’s digital infrastructure.
In 2020, a networking failure stopped online classes for elementary school students. For similar reasons, turmoil gripped the COVID-19 vaccine reservation system the following year. This year, the judicial computer network went out of service, and the National Education Information System (NEIS) angered users due to connection errors.
Experts attribute these problems to software rather than hardware — especially humanware. They point to a lack of awareness of the importance of a national network by the government and its employees.
In August, the National Information Resources Service made a manual at the behest of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety. The manual details service standards, operation method design, notes on service improvement, monitoring and overload response. However, during the latest incident, the government updated the software on a weekday, triggering an unprecedented situation.
Experts also point out that the inability to find the cause of the accident is due to poor monitoring in the first place. It was also a major disruption caused by the negligence of government employees. Similar outages will occur if the government makes light of the national network. Human error, not technical glitches, are at the root of disasters.
As always, the government will find the cause, hold officials responsible, and vow to prevent a recurrence. However, Yoon will retain Minister of Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min, disciplining a few working-level officials judging by precedents. Lee failed in his two primary duties — safety and administration — as seen in the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush and the latest network breakdown.
When Kakao caused a similar problem, Yoon harshly criticized the internet company. The company’s CEO stepped down after paying 500 billion won in compensation. People will be watching to see if the president applies dual standards to the public and private sectors.