1. How was the master plan to implement a government data center set up?

NIRS arranged a presidential committee composed of professionals from various sectors such as professors, IT experts, public officers and more to listen to different opinions and voices before and while executed the government data center implementation project. NIRS conducted Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Information Strategy Planning (ISP) as projects to systematically launch and administer the innovation. Well-prepared master plan were usefully employed in actual implementation stage.


2. How were the matters related to the laws and regulations in regard to establish a government data center resolved?

Korean Government needed to enact a number of new acts, laws and codes in related to government data center establishment, operation and management over pre-existed higher laws such as e-Government Act. It was essential to have lawful principles ready prior to make people move. If interested, you can visit www.law.go.kr. as releasable ones are available in English at the site.


3. What was the key to successfully settle conflicts among client agencies?

In Korean case, there were strong sense of commitment and leadership of top management over government data center establishment project. The presidential committee was determined to convince the agencies (clients-to-be) with various data and information. Some key ministries’ active participation in pilot projects also played as an important role in encouraging others to be positive in considering to get in as they could experience actual advantages of integration and showed examples first.


4. What happened to the organizations and human resources in charge of system operation and management of each agency in the early integration stages?

They came along with the systems they were responsible for caring to NIRS together in early stages and naturally had become NIRS’ staff later on. As AP and new service development and operation are still client agencies’ responsibility, they are still called as ever.


5. How does NIRS manage outsourced personnel who are responsible for system operation and maintenance secure enough?

Every single staff who works in NIRS is required to get a police background check and the result has to be clearly reported. The company who gets a project from NIRS, also the subject of the mutual contract with NIRS, has sole responsibility of taking care of all security incidents might occur during executing a project. They need to thoroughly understand all security regulations and requirements of NIRS and train their staff. All privately hired partners are restricted to internet access at office and there are certain security systems of NIRS to comply with such as Mobile Device Management (MDM), access control and document management system and more.


6. Any reason to set NIRS in Deajeon, not in Seoul?

Yes, there are several. First, we want a place where is secure from natural disasters by various statistics and figures. Second, we want the place is not in or near to the capital per Balanced Nation Development Plan. According to the plan, key national infrastructures are required to be decentralized. Third, the city of Daejeon is the center of Korean Science and Technology development, is so called the Silicon Valley of Korea, so we thought there would also be some benefits to be close to in terms of getting technical consultations from expert groups nearby or sharing related knowledge.


7. Is there any upper government organization that supervises NIRS?

Yes, there is. It is the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MoIS). In early stages, there were two pillars to implement and operate the government data center which were the Ministry of ICT and the Ministry forementioned. Currently, MoIS takes sole responsibility to operate it as Korean Government had chosen to put a slightly heavier dot over ‘government administration’ function than leading ICT expertise.


8. How are the budget of NIRS secured?

All client agencies prepare and submit demands for new systems and services planning to launch in next year to Ministry of Economy and Finance (MoEF) a year ahead. In between, we closely communicate with each agency about new service implementation. All the MoEF approved budgets are allocated to NIRS and requested device and solutions are bulk purchased and comprehensively managed by NIRS.


9. Tell me about the scope of services that NIRS provides except comprehensively manages information systems of central government agencies.

We also provide comprehensive security management service employing Big Data and A.I. technologies and government network management service. We have implemented and operated a government cloud platform ourselves to better serve our clients. On top of that, we had developed and operated Big Data analysis platform to work on various kinds of data to be used in public service improvement and development and shared them not only with client agencies but also with local government bodies, the division was transferred to MoIS last year in 2020 though.


10. Did the clients like the idea of integration? any resistance?

Of course not. As you can imagine, they still wanted to take whole control over their device, man, and money as before. One of the complaints was not being able to get to know about the incident management status in real time. Therefore, we had built up the system which could better facilitate the situation to satisfy their needs. We have tried our bests to resolve issues that clients brought up as much as we could. As a result, in customer satisfaction survey had conducted twice a year, we could see the marks had kept going up as time went by.


11. Please name some issues to be considered in early system migration stage.

OK. There are several stage specific issues to be considered such as issues to understand actual status of retained resources, operational status, resources to be transferred, ways to manage heterogeneous types of resources and mock drill preparation to accommodate stable resource migration and more.


12. Is there any country who adopts Korean government data center model as theirs?

Yes. Vietnam was one of the determined countries ever tried to adopt Korean model to their land. Mongolia, Nepal and Thailand were the countries who were very much interested in specific fields in Korean data center operation so we had formed business cooperation contracts with each of them. There were also countries once asked consultation to operate theirs such as Brunei, Uzbekistan and Tunisia.


13. Could you tell me about the scope of the pilot project carried out before completely integrate the systems?

Considered as one of the key agencies, 5 including Ministry of ICT, MoEF, and MoIS proactively participated in the pilot project which was carried out before fully launching the center. By willingly taking potential risks and showing examples, the forerunners had contributed the integration project to being able to make meaningful achievements after all in terms of proving its technical, managerial and economical excellency.


14. I know there would be 2 more centers ready soon over currently operated 2 ones. Could you explain about the data management plan in brief?

Currently, information systems of 22 institutions where manage public services closely related to people’s daily life are mainly taken cared by the 1st center in Daejeon. And the rest of 23, mostly have to do with social order and security are managed by the 2nd center in Gwangju. Exclusive back-up center in Gongju expected to be completed by 2022 will mainly host being backed up data currently managed both in Daejeon and Gwangju and the 3rd center in Daegu, to be ready by 2021 will control new clients’ data such as public institutions and affiliated agencies currently not under NIRS’ supervision.