- Taking opinions from and encouraging participating developers to discuss how to improve the system - ​

□ The Ministry of Science and ICT (“MSIT”; Minister Lim Hyesook) and the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (“KDCA”; Commissioner Jeong Eun-kyeong) held a meeting on August 25 (Wednesday) with private companies and institutions participating in improving the COVID-19 vaccination booking system.

※ Aug. 25, 2021 (Wed) 11:00-11:50 / NIA Seoul Office (KDCA participated virtually) / Participants include: Bespin Global, Naver Cloud, LG CNS, SSangyong Information & Communications Corp., Jade Cross, Kakao, Korea Credit Bureau (KCB), National Information Society Agency (NIA), Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA), Korea Social Security Information Service (SSIS) ​

ㅇ The meeting was organized to convey gratitude to the participating private companies and institutions and to gather various on-site opinions on system improvement. ​



[ Composition and operation of the Public-Private Joint Task Force ]

□ The government has formed a public-private joint task force*, composed of related ministries (Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, Ministry of the Interior and Safety) and private companies and institutions, to improve the COVID-19 vaccination booking system and minimize inconvenience prior to the rollout of the vaccination program for people aged between 18 and 49.
* Formation and operation of the Public-Private Joint Task Force for improving the COVID-19 (starting Jul. 22, 2021)
- A total of 24 organizations: three ministries, five public institutions, and 16 private companies and institutions ​

ㅇ Through on-site inspection, the TF improved the booking system: identity verification function has been transferred to private cloud and diverse methods of identity verification have been made available. On top of that, the TF has operated on-site situation rooms in Seoul and Osong, with the MSIT and the KDCA taking the lead, to check, improve and adjust the system.

[ Key Improvements ]

□ The improvement of the vaccine appointment booking system was made through prompt operation over a period of about two weeks.

① By transferring identity verification, which was considered the biggest cause of the bottleneck in the previous booking system, to private cloud services, the system load was reduce and users did not have to wait long to make their vaccine appointments.

- The flexible scalability of cloud services allowed the booking system to respond and process quickly* even if many users access it simultaneously.
* In general, the number of identity verification requests (a total of 28,980,000 identity verification requests from August 9 to 20, maximum of 3,170,000 requests in a day, an average of 2,400,000 requests per day) were approximately 2.5 times greater than the number of completed vaccination appointment bookings. Approximately 40% of the bookings were made in the first 30 minutes after the booking started.

② Efforts were made to enhance user convenience. For instance, identity verification methods were diversified by adding quick and simple verification service channels such as Naver, Kakao, and PASS, which are some of the most used identity verification methods by Koreans. The online vaccination booking system also introduced an online “traffic signal” that displays user traffic (optimal, delayed, severe congestion) for different identity verification methods.
* (Before) mobile phone, digital certificate, i-PIN → (After the improvement) Naver, Kakao, PASS, mobile phone, digital certificate
- After the amendment of the Digital Signature Act* in June last year, identity verification service channels operated by private companies have been fully adopted by the vaccination booking system, following their adoption by Government24 (one-stop civil service portal) and Hometax, contributing to the promotion of private identity verification services. The government plans to expand the adoption of private identity verification services in the future.
* To lay the groundwork to promote the adoption of private identity verification services and repeal the certified digital signature system (Promulgated on June 9, 2020)

③ The 10-day rotation booking system helps spread out the daily number of people that can book their vaccine appointment over 10 days, to be less than 1.9 million per day. The connection of multiple devices to the system server has been restricted and booking is now only allowed for one digital device after completing the identity verification process, mitigating spikes in site traffic to prevent server overload.



[ Contribution of businesses and institutions ]

□ More than anything, the improvements to the vaccination booking system were made on the back of devoted private companies and institutions that went into emergency mode and spared no efforts* to provide support throughout the development and operation of the system .
* About 100 professionals from private and public institutions participated during the system development and operation period (started on July 22)

< Identity verification and cloud services >

ㅇ Bespin Global, an SME that provides a cloud-based software service, was in charge of constructing the infrastructure for private cloud transformation of identity authentication function and developing an easy-access website. A large number of professionals were assigned to the project to provide an active support for speedy development.
- Naver Cloud took charge of constructing and managing cloud infrastructure, and provided cloud server and service optimization technologies to ensure smooth operation of the easy-access website, which contains about 200 virtual machines.
- Naver, Kakao, KCB, and Korea’s three major telecom companies among others, contributed to the functional improvement and system stability enhancement by making the maximum use of their identity verification processing capacities, and providing real-time monitoring and error handling services during the booking period.
- Jade Cross, a small-sized solution business, provided a solution (NetFUNNEL) that can monitor and control the traffic of user access in real time, in order to relieve overload between various identity verification services and vaccine booking website of the KDCA.

< Improvement of the vaccination booking processing system >

ㅇ LG CNS optimized the function of vaccination site search, which was a cause of the vaccination booking system overload, resulting in performance improvement of up to 30 times*.
* The speed of response to available booking time slot alerts have been reduced to 0.004 seconds from 2.58 seconds.
- Oracle Korea, Data Heaven, Vatos, E-Global Systems and Ssangyong Information & Communications Corp. enhanced the function for processing vaccine appointments and strengthened security, by supporting diagnosis, expansion, optimization, encryption and bypass blocking in the database of the KDCA vaccination booking processing system.
- In addition, System Associates, Wha Tap Labs and STC Lab made great contributions to improving the processing speed to over one million cases per hour, from 300,000 cases per hour. This was done by reframing the server of the booking system to have dedicated structure, which is suitable for large-scale access control.

< Public institutions >
ㅇ Among public institutions, the National Information Society Agency (NIA) led the systematic improvement of the overall cloud certification system by overseeing the development of the system. The Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA) provided support in improving service stability by identifying security vulnerabilities.
- Furthermore, the Korea Social Security Information Service (SSIS) was in charge of managing the vaccine booking processing system within the KDCA. The agency optimized servers and databases, checked the performance and monitored the booking status. The Korea Health Information Service (KHIS) and the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) organized an inspection team consisting of private-sector experts to prevent possible errors in advance, through verifying the booking function.
□ In the meeting, there was an exchange of views regarding multiple ways to improve the system for providing public services, and the significance of building digital system capacity. A consensus has been reached to continuously improve the system through public and private partnership in the future.
□ Minister Lim Hyesook of Science and ICT extended her heartfelt gratitude to private sector companies and institutions for their sincere commitment to help combat COVID-19. On behalf of the Korean citizens, Minister Lim gave out plaques of appreciation showing respect for the contribution made by the private sector.
ㅇ Minister Lim also said, “The active collaboration between the public and private sectors greatly contributed to solving problems rapidly and served as an opportunity to demonstrate strong ICT skills of Korea once again.”
□ KDCA Commissioner Jeong Eun-kyeong said, “I would like to thank diverse businesses and institutions for their hard work in providing a lot of help in smoothly operating the vaccine appointment booking system. We will do our best in ensuring that every citizen can get vaccinated safely and swiftly.”
For further information, please contact Deputy Director Lim Jae-hyeon (E-mail : limjh57@korea.kr) and Lee Byeong-ho (E-mail : mc3160@korea.kr)of the Ministry of Science and ICT.