Leading the Faulty Launch of the Next-Generation Social Security System... Board of Audit and Inspection Sanctions Ministry of Welfare Officials

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The Ministry of Health and Welfare was found to have pushed ahead with the launch of the next-generation social security information system (next-generation system) despite knowing the tight deadline and the possibility of defects from the development stage.

On the 30th, the Board of Audit and Inspection announced that it requested disciplinary action and warnings for the head of the next-generation system construction task force under the Ministry of Health and Welfare, who led the forced launch despite the system not being fully developed, along with three related personnel.

The next-generation system is a large-scale public system that manages welfare finances amounting to 46 trillion won annually for 22 million welfare benefit recipients.

Previously, in April 2020, the Ministry of Health and Welfare signed a comprehensive contract worth approximately 127 billion won with a consortium project team for the construction of the next-generation system. Subsequently, the system was scheduled to be launched sequentially in four phases.

The second phase, which contained key components, was originally planned for January 2022 but was delayed three times and only launched in September of the same year.

The Board of Audit and Inspection judged that the Ministry of Health and Welfare should have launched the system only when preparations and readiness checks were thoroughly completed and the system was ready for actual operations, but found these efforts insufficient.

At that time, the launch progress was only 60%, yet the Ministry, the task force, and the Korea Social Security Information Service forcibly pushed the launch forward, violating the law, according to the Board of Audit and Inspection.

Fearing that the budget would have to be returned if the second-year contract was not inspected as completed, the Ministry received a commitment letter from the project team promising to complete the unfinished tasks of the second year in the third year and decided to inspect the contract as fulfilled.

The Board of Audit and Inspection explained that this was illegal with no basis under the National Contract Act.

In particular, the task force was found to have pressured the Information Service, which opposed this as a violation of the National Contract Act, to inspect the contract as completed.

Through this process, the next-generation system was launched in September 2022, but a large-scale error occurred, causing significant confusion. Within one month after launch, 90,567 improvement requests were filed, and over six months, 304,800 complaints were submitted.

The Board of Audit and Inspection demanded that the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Information Service thoroughly carry out management and supervision duties to prevent such incidents from recurring.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.