Government to shift services sequentially over weekends and nights; residents urged to handle paperwork in advance

Cheon Jun-ho (center), head of the Ministry of Interior and Safety's Local Administrative System Reform Support Team, announces plans for information system integration and temporary service suspensions related to the launch of the South Jeolla-Gwangju Special Metropolitan City at a policy briefing held Tuesday at the Government Sejong Building. [Ministry of Interior and Safety]
Cheon Jun-ho (center), head of the Ministry of Interior and Safety's Local Administrative System Reform Support Team, announces plans for information system integration and temporary service suspensions related to the launch of the South Jeolla-Gwangju Special Metropolitan City at a policy briefing held Tuesday at the Government Sejong Building. [Ministry of Interior and Safety]

With the launch of the South Jeolla-Gwangju Special Metropolitan City just one week away, the government is racing to complete the integration of public-service systems. Residents are advised to obtain any necessary documents in advance, as some services will be temporarily suspended during the transition.

The Ministry of Interior and Safety held a policy briefing Tuesday at the Government Sejong Building, announcing plans for information system integration and temporary service outages.

The ministry will integrate and convert 584 information systems that use standard administrative codes in preparation for the new special metropolitan city's launch. Among these, data migration for 495 national agency systems alone amounts to about 160 billion records.

"The launch of the special metropolitan city will change various codes and names down to the district and county level, making it necessary to convert existing codes and names to a new framework," a ministry official said.

The institutional codes of 29 local governments, the addresses of about 3.17 million residents, and property location data will all be updated, and digital certificates for 36,000 civil servants will be reissued.

As a result, temporary service suspensions for some systems are unavoidable.

The ministry said it had rescheduled some outages originally planned for weekdays, moving them to holidays and nighttime hours to minimize public inconvenience.

Of the 289 national agency systems that provide public-facing services, 211 will continue operating without interruption, while 78 will be temporarily taken offline.

Five systems — Wetax, the local finance system, the national subsidy integrated management system, Seumter and the local water supply system — will be suspended from 6 p.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Monday.

Fifty-four systems — including the resident registration system, the Saeol administrative system, Hometax, the Hometown Love e-eum platform and the real estate transaction management system — will go offline from 6 p.m. June 30 to 9 a.m. July 1, the night before the city's official launch.

The remaining lower-impact systems will be converted in stages over weekends and at night after the launch.

Of these, nine services — including the online administrative appeals system, resident registration certificate issuance and the Saeol administrative system — will be suspended only in the South Jeolla Province and Gwangju areas.

Of the 20 information systems handling the top 50 most-requested services on Government24, 15 will remain fully operational. Only five — the resident registration, Seumter, comprehensive real estate records, Wetax and Hometax systems — will be taken offline.

The ministry said it will notify the public of the outage schedule in advance through Government24, central government websites, social media, electronic signboards and bank ATMs, and urged residents to obtain any necessary documents before the suspensions begin.

"Residents who regularly use any of these services should check in advance whether their service will be affected, and obtain any documents they need as early as possible," a ministry official said.

Meanwhile, the ministry will operate a pan-government response framework to handle any unexpected system failures during the integration process. The framework will be led by the Pan-Government Local Administrative System Reform Support Team and will involve the information technology oversight divisions of national agencies, the South Jeolla-Gwangju integration preparation teams and the Korea Local Information Research and Development Institute.

The ministry also plans to establish a status reporting and information-sharing system to monitor integration progress, and will run a situation room to conduct real-time checks throughout the transition.

In the event of an emergency such as a system failure, the situation room will be notified immediately to minimize disruption to public services.


thlee@heraldcorp.com