| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The action plan to implement the initiative outlined so far can be broken down to 3 phases: planning, implementation and operation.
For the planning phase, the Business Process Re-engineering(BPR) process was started in October 2002 for 508 public organizations in order to survey and gather information on the state of IT based work process within the public sector. Based on the result of the BPR, including the GIDC project, a total of “31 E-government Roadmap Projects” were selected for implementation by a Presidential Committee for E-government. After making a full report to the President in August, 2004, the Roadmap also passed the Cabinet meeting next month in September 2004 and thus finalized for implementation.
The first GIDC was completed in November, 2005, and e-government system from 24 central government agencies were moved into the first GIDC with the inauguration of the NCIA as the official government organization responsible for operation of the GIDC of Korea. And in November 2007, the second GIDC with backup function of the first GIDC was completed. At the same time, the e-government system of the remaining 24 central government agencies were moved into the second GIDC. Currently, a third GIDC with more advanced backup function is under construction.
As for the operational aspect of the GIDC, from 2005 to 2008, NCIA simply took care of all the independent e-government system of the 48 central government agencies which were physically placed and co-located within the GIDC. But from 2009, the budget to purchase equipment for all of the e-government system of the central government agencies was delegated to the NCIA; the NCIA procured all the needed equipment (approximately 60 mil. USD for 2009). Specifically, high performance·highly efficient·energy saving IT resource is implemented physically and numerous government agencies are allotted for their needs thereby sharing IT resource.
From 2010, virtualization technology was implemented by applying cloud computing to the GIDC in several steps allowing the NCIA to provide cloud service for civil servants to government agencies. This effort is not limited to physical resource and extends to data and information which is now being shared by the government agencies based on the cloud computing technology to build a solid IT infrastructure for the public sector.
By 2017, the NCIA plans to convert 60% of government work to cloud based infrastructure and at the same time, strengthen the failure·cyber threat response system based on big data technology to deal with possible issues that can arise from implementation of such technology.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The GIDC project was first proposed by the ‘Special Committee for E-Government(SCEG)’ consisting of private sector experts to innovate the e-government in 2002 during the Kim Dae Jung administration. At the time the SCEG pointed out that e-government projects were being implement by each of the ministries independently making integration and information sharing a difficult feat at best causing poor public service delivery to the people as well as inefficiency in the public sector. The SCEG proposed the GIDC project named ‘Building an Integrated Digital Environment for the Government’ as the solution to solve these issues.
The Participatory government which was inaugurated in 2003, inherited the e-government policies of the previous administration and developed a more detailed initiative, the ‘32 E-government Roadmap Projects’ and implemented this initiative with the strong support of the President.
As part of the 31 Roadmap Projects, the GIDC project started off with the Dept. of Public Administration developing a masterplan for the project after carrying out an overall survey designed to understand the status of IT based work process in the whole of the government.
The actual implementation of the GIDC project was carried out by the “Commission on Implementation of the GIDC” consisting of a Chairman from the private sector and experts from 9 relevant ministries and the National Information Society Agency(NIA). A separate committee made of experts from the academia, research institutes and the private sector called the “Committee on Implementation of the GIDC” was set up to review and support the implementation process by the Commission.
The actual designing, construction of the GIDC as well as implementation of the base infrastructure including digital equipment installed and moving of the IT system possessed by each of the government ministries was carried out with the participation of over 180 IT companies in Korea.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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Most of the financial burden for this project was supported by budget of the Korean government. According to ROI (Return On Investment) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) analysis performed by an independent outside organization, the total investment made by 2010 (including construction cost, digital equipment, moving cost and maintenance) was approximately 900 bil. KRW where as the cumulative benefit gain (including security, disaster preparation, cost reduction, stable operation) was estimated at 1.14 tril. KRW, thus leaving a management profit of 228.8 bil. KRW.
Technical and manpower support came from various government officers working in 40 central government agencies during the planning and implementation of the GIDC project. Currently, the NCIA is in charge of operation of the GIDC. However, it should be noted that in the process of implementation of this project starting from planning all the way to operation, experts from the academia, research institutes and private enterprises participated and supported the decision making process as well as implementation in unofficial capacity.
Specifically, many IT companies supported the technical aspect of its implementation and over half of the operation of the GIDC is currently outsourced to the private sector. Private businesses participate in open bidding procurement and conclude contract for one or twe years with the NCIA.
Moreover, in order to deal with and respond to physical threats, a system for collaboration with public agencies such as the police, military and fire stations was developed. For cyber threats, the NCIA works with various relevant organizations such as the National Intelligence Service, KISA(Korea Internet Security Agency) and KLID(Korea Local Information & Reserch & Development) and has concluded MOUs with security specialized companies.
As for regional involvement, the NCIA has concluded MOU with nearby regional universities and research institutes to encourage employment and foster the regional IT industry.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Despite the increase of over 500% in number of equipment managed in comparison to pre-GIDC period, the average system failure time fell from 67 minutes in the pre-GIDC period to 4.5 minutes in 2013. Even during such system failure, with adequate redundancy of servers and the network that allows traffic to use other routes, actual service delivery to the people did not suffer at all.
Since the implementation of the GIDC, there has not even been one single instance of power interruption with the complete uninterruptible system built in and the e-government system that were distributed in the two GIDC with real-time mutual backup system allow non-stop seamless service delivery all year around.
The cost saving achieved by simplifying the procurement process by giving the NCIA the purchasing power for all of the IT resource of the government reaches around 30% for equipment purchase and 30% for maintenance. And by making use of the virtualization or clustering technology, it became possible to integrate the purchase of equipment for each work process and maximize efficiency of government resource through co-use of equipment by several government agencies.
Cost and resource savings from such activities were then invested in other projects such as resolving the digital and security divide.
Level of security has also been greatly augmented. Real-time monitoring and surveillance of the building and facilities of the GIDC as well as robust access control has strengthened physical security. As for cyber security, non-stop 24/7 integrated monitoring of all network and equipment, multi-layered defense system and big data based CERT (Cyber Emergency Response Team) allows immediate response to outside threats.
Even with approximately 10,000 attempts of cyber attacks, there has never been one single instance of damage by major fatal attack on system within the GIDC.
According to a report made by a private organization, the benefit accrued from such security measures was estimated at 704.8 bil. KRW by 2010.
In other aspects, by outsourcing the implementation and operation of the GIDC to some 200 private Korean businesses, the Korean government helped to develop the IT industry and also helped the regional economy through more employment and economic benefits around the two GIDC in regional areas.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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In order to improve the E-government of Korea to the level of seamless integration, the Participatory Government (2003~2008, President ROH) prepared the ‘31 E-government Roadmap Projects’in 2003. The GIDC project was included as one of the innovative 31 Roadmap Projects to share information resource of the government. The result of such planning was reported to the President in August, 2004, and the President personally oversaw and managed the GIDC project from implementation to monitoring and post-evaluation.
And the ‘GIDC Implementation Committee’ composed of experts from the academia, research institutes and private businesses reviewed the implementation strategies for the GIDC.
During the operation phase, service satisfaction level of the 44 government agencies that receive services offered by the NCIA was evaluated to determine the level of service provided by the NCIA and gathered issues and opinion from the customers to improve services provided by the NCIA. Based on such evaluations, the NCIA has been continuously improving its services to the 44 government agencies.
Evaluation in 25 index from 5 areas such as customer response, work capacity, system operation, communication and sharing were performed by external organization every year where an annual average of over 50 items for improvement were identified, reviewed and processed.
And such effort led to confidence in the NCIA, raising the result of customer service satisfaction score from 60 points during the early implementation phase to over 90 points in 2013.
Even now, the NCIA is evaluated on a regular basis by various government agencies such as the National Assembly, Office of the Prime Minister and the National Intelligence Service on work process and cyber response where the result of such evaluation are continuously reflected back into the operation performed by the NCIA leading to efficiency and improvement of the operation system.
In addition to such external evaluation, the NCIA also analyzes various external elements such as cyber threats and system failures to identify areas for improvement. As cyber threats are becoming more advanced and system failures more broad in scope, the NCIA has implemented a big data based comprehensive log analysis system in 2013 to discover signs of cyber threats and system failures well in advance and respond to any problems in real-time.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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In the planning phase, the main problems encountered were the opposition to the implementation of the GIDC itself and conflict between competent government agencies on implementation of the project.
Government agencies were afraid that integration of IT departments into a new organization would lead to downsizing of the agencies and loss of authority in IT. This issue was overcome by setting up a pan-government implementation system directly under the President that could coordinate and mediate various issues raised by government agencies about to be integrated into the GIDC.
Conflict between competent government agencies was resolved by selecting one single competent agency to implement the project based on evaluation of capacity in IT technology by the President himself.
During the implementation phase, the competition to host the site of the GIDC by local governments and differing opinions of the stakeholders were the main problems.
To resolve the hosting competition by local governments, a ‘Site Selection Team’ was setup composed of experts from different fields and this Team made the final selection upon evaluation and onsite visits to candidate sites And consensus on the GIDC project was built through several public hearings and seminar on the issues for the stakeholders of the GIDC project which solved the conflicting issues raised by these stakeholders.
During the operation phase, it was concerns by others on possible physical and cyber threats posed by integration that became the main issue.
This issue was solved by gaining confidence of those concerned; business continuity plan was developed to deal with diverse possible emergencies and physical·cyber threats which was then internalized by those working at the NCIA.
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