[Exclusive] NIRMA Director Jaeyong Lee: "Redundancy System to Be Established by Year-End... Expansion to Government Planned"

"No Government Agencies Have Established Cloud Disaster Recovery Systems"

Jaeyong Lee, Director of the National Information Resources Service Photo by Yonhap News

Following the fire at the main data center of the National Intelligence Resources Management Agency (NIRMA) in Daejeon, which caused a major government system outage, Jaeyong Lee, Director of NIRMA, stated, "By the end of this year, we plan to establish a redundancy system (cloud disaster recovery, or DR) to overhaul our internal systems for disaster recovery." This announcement comes after a delay in clarifying the completion timeline, despite the disruption of key services due to the fire.

The cloud disaster recovery (DR) system refers to a 'twin' cloud setup with identical environments, allowing operations to continue from another location in the event of a disaster at one site. This kind of system can prevent large-scale service outages, but most government agencies currently do not have such systems in place. NIRMA plans to first implement the system internally and conduct technical verification, after which it will provide guidelines for wider adoption across government systems.

In a phone interview with Asia Economy on September 28, Director Lee addressed criticism that the lack of redundancy had worsened the system paralysis, saying, "Currently, the government systems do not have properly established cloud DR systems." He added, "Cloud DR requires significant budget, and depending on the nature of the system, it may need to be rebuilt from scratch."

Director Lee further explained, "Some financial institutions, such as banks and credit card companies, have cloud DR systems in place and actually operate them, but this is only a minority." He continued, "Through this year's pilot project, NIRMA will apply and technically verify the system internally, and later provide guidelines to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and other agencies." The government reportedly plans to use NIRMA's cloud DR implementation as a model for expanding this approach to other public institutions.

According to the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the fire on September 26 halted the operation of 647 government IT systems at NIRMA's Daejeon headquarters. The government plans to prioritize the recovery of 551 services, excluding the 96 systems directly affected by the fire.

Three years ago, in October 2022, the lack of redundancy in the operation management tools at the Pangyo Data Center was criticized during the Kakao service outage. However, it has now come to light that even the government did not implement redundancy measures for its own systems. In response to the outage, Kakao upgraded its disaster recovery system to a triple-redundant structure linking three data centers.

Director Lee added, "To establish cloud DR, each agency needs to secure a separate budget. For a so-called twin system to operate effectively, services must be run simultaneously in two different locations, which is effective but costly."

Currently, NIRMA operates 1,600 work systems, including key systems from central agencies such as the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

During the nationwide administrative system 'Sael' outage in 2023, NIRMA, which managed the system, shifted its disaster recovery (DR) approach from 'active-standby' to 'active-active' through consulting and has since been running pilot projects. This is the first time the agency has publicly announced the expected completion date for the new system.