By Rocky Swift
TOKYO (Reuters) – The Japanese government has finally phased out the use of floppy disks in all its systems, 20 years after their heyday, marking a long-awaited milestone in its campaign to modernize its bureaucracy.
By mid-last month, the Digital Agency had withdrawn all 1,034 regulations governing the use of these technologies, with the exception of one environmental measure relating to vehicle recycling.
“We won the war against floppy disks on June 28!” Digital Minister Taro Kono, who has spoken out loudly in favor of banning fax machines and other analog technology from government offices, told Reuters in a statement on Wednesday.
The Digital Agency was founded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, when an effort to roll out nationwide testing and vaccinations found that government was still reliant on paper records and outdated technology.
Kono is a charismatic figure with 2.5 million followers on X. He previously headed the ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs and was responsible for the implementation of the COVID vaccine. He took up his current position in August 2022 after his bid to become prime minister failed.
Japan’s digitalization efforts have run into numerous problems, however. A contact-tracing app flopped during the pandemic, and the rollout of the government’s My Number digital identification card has been slower than hoped amid repeated data missteps.
(Reporting by Rocky Swift; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
