Japanese government ends the use of floppy disks in an attempt to modernize bureaucracy

Tokyo:

Japan’s government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, two decades after its heyday, reaching a long-awaited milestone in a campaign to modernize bureaucracy.

By the middle of last month, the Digital Agency had eliminated all 1,034 regulations governing its use, except for an environmental restriction related to vehicle recycling.

“We won the war on floppy disks on June 28!” Digital Minister Taro Kono, who has advocated the elimination of fax machines and other analogue technology from the government, told Reuters in a statement on Wednesday.

The Digital Agency was created during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, when a struggle to roll out testing and vaccinations nationally revealed that the government was still relying on paper filing and outdated technology.

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However, Japan’s digitalization effort has encountered numerous obstacles. A contact tracing app failed during the pandemic and the government’s adoption of the My Number digital ID card was slower than expected amid repeated data setbacks.

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