Where’s the CTO in the government?
Published: 28 Nov. 2023, 20:19
Suh Kyoung-ho
The author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.
What an embarrassment for a government touting primacy in the digitalization of administrative work! The Minister of Interior and Safety, Lee Sang-min, had to cut short his global tour to flaunt the e-government aptness after the government’s administrative network crashed on Nov. 17. Government employees must have access to the network to handle civil certificate issuances in particular.
To add to the chagrin, a domino crash in public service servers went on throughout the following week — the resident registration system on Nov. 22, the Public Procurement Service auction posting page the following day, and the mobile ID card issuing system of the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation the next day. The government ironically was hosting the “K-ICT” week at the Bexco Exhibition Center in Busan to celebrate its digital drive and progress across administrative work. The interior minister read the congratulatory message from President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The chain disruption in the administrative network brought about scorn regarding the government’s strict rule of excluding big tech companies from public software procurement projects. Critics claimed that the public software system is unstable as the job was given to less capable smaller companies. The claim has some grounds, but cannot be entirely right.
Public software projects became off-limits for big enterprises from 2012. Under the Software Promotion Act, companies falling under the category of conglomerates cannot take part in bidding for government procurements on software. Big names were strictly forbidden at the early stage, but exceptions were made over time. Big players were able to bid in a consortium with smaller peers in the defense, diplomacy, security and electric field in 2013, new technologies in 2015 and private-sector software support programs in 2020. Out of the 19 projects costing more than 100 billion won ($77 million) from 2018 to 2022, 16 cases — or 84.2 percent — made exceptions for large companies in bidding for the programs.
The exclusion of big companies did bring about the desired effect. In the public software market, for instance, the share of small and mid-sized companies surged to 62.5 percent in 2022 from 19 percent in 2019. That helped breed SMEs and diversify operators in the public software market.
Whether the handicap on large companies really lowered the quality of public software system or not is debatable. Some large players contend that smaller competitors cannot match their standards. The CEO of a big system integration (SI) company claimed that the “ill-bred” policy of giving up integrity in the national infrastructure system only to help SMEs has critically damaged the national IT system. SMEs don’t agree. The CEO of an SME specializing in the public software system retorted that the massive next-generation system projects that caused problems often involved large companies.
A more fundamental issue is involved here. Government software is a product like any other whose quality depends on the money the government pays. Roads and bridges are built based on the budget — and the progress can be checked throughout the construction process. But invisible assets like software cannot be verified. As a result, the budget is stingy. “The government must pay a fair price. It does not make sense to expect an output of 100 by paying just half the price,” the CEO of a big company said. Another CEO of a small company complained that despite the skimpy payment, the government endlessly demanded changes but did not even check whether or not the changes were made properly.
The Interior Ministry singled out a router malfunction as the cause for the latest breakdown in the administrative network for civil services. Although the ministry blames the hardware, the software standard cannot be trusted, either. The two CEOs of big and small companies do not have faith in the current administration network. “Installing software is the same as building a house. If the design and construction go wrong, the house will be in trouble,” the CEO of the large company said. “Accidents can occur. But the slow response of identifying and correcting the flaw is a bigger problem, as there is no digital map of administrative networks. Since they do not know the source of the problem, they cannot fix it,” the CEO of the small software company said. He criticized the government for blindly holding them accountable for any problems with the administrative networks.
To ensure quality in the public-sector software, the government who awards the project must be knowledgeable first. But the aptness of the Interior Ministry is being questioned. The government needs a chief technology officer (CTO) as in the private sector, if it is really serious about the digital drive. Before rolling out new projects with fancier names, the government must pay more attention to quality control and maintenance than others.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.
Standards Board Policy (0/250자)