| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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NCIS is the world's first public sector IDC.
Government Data Center is an innovative solution of Korean government to resolve problems such as inefficient practice of information resources and underdeveloped computing environment. Most governments, in general cases, have had private professionals to take care of the system or transferred their system to a private data center. However, NCIS chose to efficiently manage the resources on their own.
Launching NCIS has significant implication as it is an IT industry boost up activity which was not initiated from private part but from public.
The project execution process was innovative as well.
Building a Government Data Center was an original idea which grew out from sectionalism widespread across government institutes. In early 2000, Korean government was mainly focused on developing e-Government services however, there were not many discussion or idea sharing among ministries. In this circumstances, an idea of constructing a government data center which extensively integrating and operating all the government systems came out, most ministries strongly resisted. However, T/F for the data center construction project had been launched and issues were mediated through regular discussion sessions. Therefore, GIDC project was the outcome of innovative conception which broke down partitions across ministries.
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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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①(Project Executor) GIDC project was mainly executed by Ministry of Interior. Ministry of ICT and Ministry of Interior along with T/F of presidential committee were working together as executors in planning stage. Affiliated institutes in the field of IT and private companies added their hands as well. About 180 domestic IT companies and ‘GIDC Project Promotion Team’ composed with public officials from each ministry and groups of professionals were gathered together in implementation practice.
②(Service Demand) Safe and stable government service provision to people has been made possible as the stability of e-Government service has been secured through consolidation and operation of integrated government information resources.
At the same time, equal exercise of services regardless of the class of people has become available through mobile e-Government service which can be practiced anywhere and anytime.
NCIS is constantly adopting and leading cutting edge IT technologies such as cloud computing, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in its data center operation.
It has contributed to vitalizing the domestic IT market through these activities. On top of that, it has improved unfair practices between main contractors and subcontractors and made best efforts to encourage more SMEs to participate in a number of government projects such as placing separate orders for S/W projects to nurture their capability.
NCIS has lessened down work loads of public officials of each ministry by stably managing government information resources and provided ‘Remote Business Support Service’ for them as well. With the system, they can safely and conveniently carry out the work by accessing internet anywhere and any time. This function provides flexible working environment for government officers, at the same time, secures business continuity.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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①(Planning Stage) The Ministry of Planning and Budget, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of ICT took the initiative to proceed a BPR which aimed to investigate as-is status of IT-based work processing and its major issues of 508 administrative agencies for 4 months between June and October 2002.
Based on the result, ‘31 e-Government Roadmap Projects’ including ‘GIDC construction’ was confirmed in August 2003. ISP for GIDC building project was executed in July 2004. The document was reported to the President in August 2004 and finally settled in September 2004 after ratified in the National Assembly Meeting.
Securing the budget process went relatively smooth as the Ministry of Planning and Budget was jointly participated in the project from the planning stage and proactive communications among ministries were ensured through the Presidential Committee T/F directly. According to the TCO (Total Cost Ownership) / ROI (Return On Investment) analysis conducted by a private professional institute, about USD 432million management profits had been made as the total costs (costs for construction, system implementation, migration, operation and maintenance) invested until 2014 was about USD 2.5 billion while accumulated profits (security, disaster prevention, cost savings and stable operation) made until the end of 2014 was USD 2.9 billion.
②(Implementation Stage) Government officials of about 40 ministries proactively participated in the GIDC planning and implementation stage. Experts from academia, research institutes and corporates supported the decision-making process and project execution both officially and unofficially throughout the entire stages from planning, designing, implementation to operation.
③(Migration Stage) In March 2005, actual inspection upon information resources had been conducted and the master plan for migration was set up based on the investigation result which suggested three-staged transfers.
Resource migration was aimed at minimizing inconvenience of users with the strategic movement such as impeccable prior set-up of migrating environment, reducing down the service interruption duration as much as possible, decreasing possible accident occurrence, minimizing migration costs and vitalizing communications among affiliated organizations.
All the environment for migration was prepared in advance such as power and N/W installation, communication network configuration and command and control center set-up to avoid delay in the schedule. The transfer execution was mainly conducted on weekends to minimize suspension of the e-Government services. Mock disaster drills and thorough pre inspection definitely benefited e-Government services to be continuously provided with minimal suspension.
④(Operation Stage) In order to systematically manage individually-operated government information resources, NCIS set up a standardized operation process based on ITIL, one of the international standards in IT service quality management. NCIS acquired ISO 20000 certificate in December 2006 over all IT services provided in NCIS Daejeon for the first time in the world.
The foundation of comprehensive security management system was laid in 2011.
In 2015, the number of information security rule-sets increased to 19,000 from mere 7,000 in 2006 when initially established. The crucial national information assets could be safely kept from serious infringement by retaining security experts to 77 in 2015 while there were only 10 in its initial period.
Furthermore, NCIS has endeavored to save more national informatization budget and improve service quality by introducing cloud computing technologies to cut carbon emissions and IT budget from 2010.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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GIDC was initially proposed by ‘e-Government Special Committee’ composed of private professionals to innovate overall e-Government in 2002. The Committee raised the issue that individually implemented e-Government policies barred inter-ministerial liaison which could lead to inefficient administration and inconvenience of public use. They suggested ‘Government Integrated Computation Environment Implementation’ as a solution to that concern.
GIDC, designated as one of the ‘31 projects in e-Government Roadmap’ designed a GIDC master plan mainly with the Ministry of the Interior after thoroughly investigating IT based actual work processing practice across the government agencies.
First of all, GIDC preparation group consisting of staff from the Ministry of ICT was operated (Nov. 2004~Feb. 2005). After that, ‘GIDC Promotion Group’ headed by private experts and composed of public officials of 9 ministries such as the Ministy of ICT and National Statistics Office and professionals from National Information Society Agency, actually executed the project. Along with this group, ‘GIDC Construction Promotion Committee’ with top-level professionals from research institutes, academia and private companies were established. They held a regular meeting every month, discussed and supported the activities of the group.
About 180 domestic IT companies engaged in actual implementation practice such as GIDC design, construction, system implementation and migration and more.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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①(Stability) Despite the increase of over 500% in number of equipments 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. Since the implementation of GIDC, there has not even been one single instance of power interruption with the complete uninterruptible system built in, seamless service delivery all year around.
②(Savings) The cost saving, achieved by simplifying the procurement process by granting NCIS the purchasing power for all the government IT resources, reached around 30% for equipment purchase and for maintenance respectively. Cost and resource savings from such activities were then invested in other projects such as resolving the digital and security divides. NCIS has introduced cold external air to cool down computational machine at winter seasons to practice a Green Data Center. In 2016, it cut 28.5% of the greenhouse gas emissions from its target.
③(Safety) Real-time monitoring and surveillance system of the building and facilities of GIDC as well as robust access control have reinforced physical security. As for cyber security, non-stop 24/7 integrated monitoring of all networks and equipments, multi-layered defense system and big data-based CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) allow immediate response to various external threats. According to a report by a private institute, the accumulated benefits occurred from such security measures were estimated around USD 810 million by 2014.
④(Synergy) The Korean government supported to boost the domestic IT industry by outsourcing the implementation and operation of GIDC to about 200 private Korean businesses. It has improved unfair practices between main contractors and subcontractors and made best efforts to encourage more SMEs to participate in a number of government projects such as placing separate order for S/W projects to nurture their capability.
It also revitalized the regional economy particularly where the two GIDCs are located with more employment and economic benefits. According to an analysis by a private professional institute employing Multi-regional input-output (MRIO), the accumulated benefits contributed to local economies turned out to be over USD890 million until 2014.
⑤(Capability) Operational capability has been specialized as all the government information systems were consolidated in NCIS and professionals per sector-server, network, security - were invited. Any possible information devide between institutes was resolved by managing the system per agency and outcomes per strategic investment over new technologies such as AI and Big Data have had effect on across all the institutes.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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① In the planning stage, resistance toward an idea of integration had become one of the major concerns to be dealt with.
Government agencies were afraid that the integration of IT departments into a new organization would lead them to downsizing of the organization and the loss of authority in IT. This issue was overcome by setting up a pan-governmental implementation project committee directly under the President that could coordinate various issues raised by government agencies.
Operational & managerial incentives were given to those migrating institutes to encourage their active participation. Thoroughly-designed plans and revised legal regulations could convince various stakeholders. Not only the Ministry of the the Interior and the Ministry of ICT but also the Ministry of Planning and Budget was participating in BPR and ISPs per each project were carefully executed.
② During the implementation phase, the competition to host the site of GIDC by local governments and migrating the resources without service interruption were the main concerns. To resolve the hosting competition, a ‘Site Selection Team’ composed of experts from different fields was setup and this Team made the final selection upon evaluation and onsite visits to candidate sites. Consensus on the GIDC project was built through several public hearings and seminars on the issues for the stakeholders.
A total of 42 times of system migration in total. The services to be transferred were classified as “seamless” and “normal” according to the degree of influence. Normal-migration-to-be services were temporarily stopped over evening time of weekends, promptly transferred and resumed. Seamless-migration-to-be services were those crucial government administrative works supposed to be operated 24/7. Therefore, identical work process environment needed to be set up in GIDC prior to the action, and immediate relocation was carried out afterwards. All services were resumed from the newly transferred surroundings right after.
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