Ministry of the Interior and Safety: "1,233 Cases of Incorrect Issuance on Government24... Cause Was Programmer Error"

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety explained that a total of 1,233 cases of errors occurred last month in which someone else's civil complaint documents were issued on Government24, and the cause was a 'developer's mistake.'

On the 5th, the Ministry stated in an explanatory document, "The cause of this erroneous issuance was that during the optimization process of the linkage program between Government24 and the education information system, when multiple users accessed simultaneously, certificates of other people were issued." It added, "During the process of changing the issuance format of the corporate tax payment certificate from the National Tax Service, the representative's name and resident registration number were displayed instead of the company name and business registration number," and explained, "It was all revealed to be a developer's programming error."

Earlier last month, it was belatedly revealed that errors occurred on Government24 where someone else's documents were issued when issuing academic transcripts and tax payment certificates. The documents reportedly contained personal information such as another person's name, resident registration number, address, and tax payment details.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, 646 errors occurred related to education civil complaint services and 587 errors related to tax payment certificates. The ministry explained that the erroneously issued documents were deleted and the affected parties were notified, and that related documents have been issued normally since then. A ministry official said, "Erroneously issued documents related to academic records and graduation were deleted immediately upon confirmation on the 1st of last month, and erroneously issued corporate tax payment certificates were deleted immediately upon confirmation on the 19th of last month."

Furthermore, the Ministry reported the personal information exposed to others during the erroneous issuance process to the Personal Information Protection Commission in accordance with personal information protection regulations, and notified the affected parties of the erroneous issuance via phone calls and mail.

As a measure to prevent recurrence of erroneous issuance, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety decided to develop and apply a pre-verification program for normal issuance of education civil complaint certificates to fundamentally prevent erroneous issuance. For the National Tax Service civil complaint service tax payment certificates, errors will be prevented by blocking unnecessary linkage information. Additionally, the ministry plans to strengthen pre-testing considering various user environments for all Government24 civil complaint issuance services, improve the developer's programming methods, and enhance reporting and control regarding form modifications.