The Government of Japan wants remove floppy disks that are still needed to send certain types of documentation to the administration. Yes, incredible as it may seem, several decades after they have become obsolete, in Japan it is still mandatory to send certain types of data to the government on floppy disks and CDs. But Taro Konowhich is called the Japan Minister of Digitizationwants to end this.
Kono, who has also made it clear that he hates faxes because they are obsolete, wants to end the administration’s reliance on outdated technology, and has plans to revise the rules that require the use of faxes to send information to Japanese authorities. The minister has confirmed the news in the framework of the fifth edition of the Conference on the concept of digital society, also mentioning that it is only one of the steps they want to take to launch digital government services. Also for launch a national identification number for all Japanese citizenswith which they can access various state services.
This new identification system, which will be simply called MyNumber, according to The Register, is part of the government’s plans to launch various digital services in the country. Many of them will make it necessary to send data to online platforms, which will directly eliminate the use of physical media for many operations with data in the administration.
But it is possible that the implementation of these programs and the new regulations that Kono wants to approve will encounter more barriers than the ministry thought. Researching what it would take to get the program up and running, Kono’s ministry found that there would be more than 1,900 rules on how data can be shared with the government. Many of them expressly stipulate that floppy disks or CDs must be used to send data. Sending data over the Internet is not allowed for security reasons.
That is why Kono wants to end these regulations, and has assured that his department will take measures to do so as soon as possible, with the aim of being able to continue advancing in its modernization and digital transformation efforts.
He is not the prime minister trying to embark on a process of digital modernization in Japan. In 2021, former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga promised to reduce the government’s reliance on faxes and official stamps. But Suga was in office for a short time, and his digital transformation plans could not be carried out.
Kono has also given its approval to a plan that will see Japan’s government address its shortage of technological skills, improve its communications infrastructure and I even got to implement Web3.
Although it may be surprising that Japan still uses floppy disks, it is not the only country that relies on archaic technologies for administrative procedures. South Korea got rid of ActiveX controls on some government websites in 2021, and the Australian government used a simple database to manage welfare payments until the end of the last decade.
In the United States, the Internal Revenue Service handles millions of handwritten, paper tax forms each year. Employees of that service continue to open envelopes and type details by hand from the forms instead of using OCRs and automation systems. Also, it’s only been three years since they stopped using eight-inch floppy disks to coordinate anything less than the launch of nuclear weapons.
