Ministry of the Interior and Safety budget 175.3 billion→34.2 billion KRW this year
Concerns over delay or reduction of 5-year roadmap
Government busy establishing plan B, companies busy responding

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The public cloud conversion project budget was reduced to 20% of the initial plan this year.

Disruptions to the government’s plan to switch all administrative and public institution information systems to a 100% cloud system between 2021 and 2025 has become inevitable. The government is busy establishing a ‘Plan B’, and cloud companies are busy establishing responsive measures.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s final budget in 2023 for the public cloud conversion project was confirmed to be 34.2 billion KRW. This is a level that doesn’t even reach a quarter of the 175.3 billion KRW proposed by the ‘Administrative and Public Institution Information Resource Cloud Conversion and Integration Plan’ in 2021.

The government spent 57 billion KRW in 2021, the 1st year of public cloud conversion, and 178.6 billion KRW last year, the 2nd year. They supported the cloud conversion costs for each institution and the initial 1-year usage fees for private and public cloud centers.

Though they had planned to convert and integrate 2,167 administrative and public institution information systems and 13,004 servers to cloud systems, they were unable to escape the general trend of budget cuts.
With the budgets taking a massive cut, there are growing concerns that the 5-year roadmap for cloud conversion in the public sector will be delayed or reduced.

A member of the industry said that, “We focused our investment and placement of our workforce into the public cloud conversion project according to government plans, but with them cutting the budget in this important 3rd year, we’re in trouble,” and said that, “It would be great if they could give us a clear plan on the public cloud conversion project so we can tell if we should continue on with our business plans.” It is thought that more than a few companies have converted their company workforce to the private cloud business.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety is taking the position of reviewing the public cloud conversion project plans from a ‘zero base’. As big as the project is, it isn’t easy to utilize different budgets. They plan to first prepare measures to operate this year with a budget of 34.2 billion KRW for now and come up with project plans for 2024 and 2025 later.

Plans to scale down the entire project, pushing back this year’s project to after 2024, or allowing local governments to utilize their own budgets are being discussed.

Prior to this, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety succeeded in converting over 1,000 information systems to cloud systems by last year, and was evaluated to be able to quickly and flexibly provide government services in response to urgent administrative needs through the public cloud conversion project. It was explained that they contributed to improving the usage rate of Korean software (SW), reducing operating costs, and reducing carbon emissions.

Reporter Hye-mi Kwon (hyeming@etnews.com)