South Korea: 157 online govt services restored after data centre fire

Seoul, Oct 6 (IANS) A total of 157 online government services have been restored in the aftermath of an outage caused by last month's fire at the state data management agency, the government said Monday.

As of 6 pm, the restoration rate reached 24.3 per cent after 157 of the 647 services affected by the fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in the central city of Daejeon were brought back online, according to the central disaster response headquarters, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The government-wide intranet, Onnara System, is now available, they added.

The government said it will accelerate efforts to bring the remaining services back online after mapping out plans to move 96 systems destroyed in the fire to another national data center in Daegu, some 235 kilometres southeast of Seoul, by Tuesday.

The fire began after a lithium-ion battery exploded in a server room on the fifth floor of the NIRS on September 26 and was completely extinguished the following day.

A total of 96 systems were directly damaged by the fire.

The government shut down 647 online systems as a preemptive measure to safeguard the systems after the fire caused temperature and humidity control malfunctions that can lead to overheating.

Of the affected services, 436 are public programs and 211 are intranet systems for government officials.

Earlier on October 3, South Korean government said that it will speed up the restoration of online government services affected by last week's fire at the state data management agency during the extended Chuseok holiday.

South Korea's Interior Minister Yun Ho-jung made the remarks during a government meeting, a week after the fire at the National Information Resources Service (NIRS) in Daejeon, about 140 kilometers south of Seoul, caused a massive systems outage, Yonhap News Agency reported.

"The government will accelerate the restoration with exceptional determination, while treating the seven-day holiday as golden time for recovery," he said during the meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters. "The government will respond thoroughly to ensure no gaps in administrative services and safety management during the holiday."

The seven-day break, which covers Chuseok, National Foundation Day and Hangeul Day, began on October 3 and runs till October 9.

Yun said the government is in talks with the presidential office and the financial authorities to secure reserve funds for the NIRS' restoration and relocation of damaged systems to an NIRS branch in the southeastern city of Daegu.

"Normalising computer network failures is expected to take time," he said. "We plan to select key systems directly related to people's everyday lives and come up with separate management systems for them."

--IANS

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