[Reporter’s Notebook] Apply the Kakao Outage Prevention Act to the Government as Well

"The network equipment (L4 switch) of the administrative electronic signature authentication system malfunctioned and was replaced. The cause of the malfunction is unknown."

This summarizes the explanation from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety regarding the government administrative network and the ‘Government24’ civil service outage. To put it bluntly, it seems the government currently does not know how the administrative network is functioning properly.

The cause of the problem must be identified to establish measures to prevent recurrence. If things continue like this, administrative network failures could happen again anytime and anywhere. The interruptions of the ‘Next-Generation Resident Registration System’ at community centers on the 21st and 22nd and the suspension of the Public Procurement Service’s Nara Marketplace are clear examples. Although these are described as temporary failures, the government administrative network continues to show problems like aftershocks.

Currently, the National Information Resources Service manages about 1,440 administrative systems across 52 central government ministries. Even if only one of these 1,440 administrative systems malfunctions, there is a risk of a cascading outage. This recent administrative network paralysis incident is proof, as the Saeol system stopped, causing the Government24 service to be suspended simultaneously.

Given this situation, criticism arises that the government is being too lenient with itself. This is because it is compared to the KakaoTalk outage incident last October. At that time, the government emphasized a continuous disaster recovery (DR) system and enacted the ‘Kakao Outage Prevention Act,’ effectively mandating a redundant system. However, the government’s own DR system did not function properly. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety explained that although there was a redundant system, it also had errors.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety plans to form a ‘Local Administrative IT Service Reform Task Force (TF)’ to devise measures to prevent recurrence. However, merely forming a TF cannot alleviate public anxiety. On the 15th, the National Security Office held a ‘Cybersecurity Situation Review Meeting’ to check crisis response readiness. The office explained that the meeting was held to review preparedness on the first anniversary of the KakaoTalk outage. Yet, two days later, the government’s administrative network outage occurred.

The TF must first conduct an accurate and transparent investigation into the cause. Above all, the strict standards applied to private companies must also be applied to the government. The downtime of the public administrative network is a far more serious matter than the KakaoTalk outage in the private sector. If the government intends to strengthen control over private companies through laws like the ‘Kakao Outage Prevention Act,’ it must first thoroughly inspect and reinforce its own IT systems.