TOKYO -- As Japan tries to bring more government functions into the digital age, local authorities in Tokyo are starting to leave behind the floppy disks they used for decades to store and move data.
Meguro Ward plans to put all work involving floppies and other physical storage media online in fiscal 2021, and Chiyoda Ward plans a similar transition within the next few years. Minato Ward moved its payment procedures from floppies to online systems in 2019.
That officials in Japan's capital are -- reluctantly -- abandoning this technology only now underscores the hurdles toward the full digital transition sought by the central government.
The disks "almost never broke and lost data," said Yoichi Ono, who is in charge of managing public funds for Meguro Ward. The ward has long saved information on payments to employees on 3.5-inch floppies to physically transport to the bank for processing.
This system survived even after floppies themselves disappeared from the market. Sony, one of the earliest suppliers of 3.5-inch floppy disks, stopped making them a decade ago. Floppies can be reused, and the ward had plenty on hand, giving it little reason to deal with the time and expense of upgrading to new systems.
That changed in 2019, when Mizuho Bank informed the ward that it would begin charging 50,000 yen ($438 at current rates) per month for use of physical storage media, including floppies.
The bank cited the end of production and the cost of maintaining disk readers and pointed out the relative inefficiency and risk of lost data involved compared with online banking.
The prospect of spending roughly an extra $5,000 a year pushed the ward to make the switch for all work involving outside systems. "This will save us the time of having each department save data to floppy disks and carry them around," Ono said.
For Chiyoda Ward, the switch is part of a plan to completely overhaul its systems by fiscal 2026. Authorities aim to enable residents to fill out paperwork without having to physically visit a ward office, both to improve the quality of services and to lighten the burden on employees.
A full switch to digital services remains a long way off, given the time that will be needed to handle tasks such as digitizing paper contracts. "There are a lot of little things that need to be handled in fine detail," according to Chiyoda Ward accounting chief Shogo Hoshina.
