Japan could be a pacesetter in innovation and expertise, however this week a distinguished authorities determine revealed the way it typically likes to carry on to outdated applied sciences, too.
Days after taking over his function because the nation’s Minister of Digital Affairs, Taro Kono tweeted: “Digital Minister declares a struggle on floppy discs.”
That’s proper, floppy disks, these data-holding plastic objects that our nice grandparents used to stay into computer systems. Although in Japan, some of us nonetheless do.
Kono mentioned there are “about 1900 authorities procedures” that contain members of the enterprise neighborhood having to make use of some sort of disk, together with the floppy sort.
Digital Minister declares a struggle on floppy discs.
There are about 1900 authorities procedures that requires enterprise neighborhood to make use of discs, i. e. floppy disc, CD, MD, and so on to submit purposes and different types. Digital Company is to vary these laws so you should utilize on-line.— KONO Taro (@konotaromp) August 31, 2022
In a daring bid to take authorities work into the twenty first century — 22 years after it arrived and 11 years after Sony manufactured the final floppy disk — Kono mentioned he desires to lastly exchange the storage medium and do every thing on-line as an alternative.
It’s not the primary time that Kono has gone on the offensive in opposition to outdated tech. Talking final 12 months in his earlier function as administrative reform minister, he made clear his want to rid authorities departments of fax machines, suggesting electronic mail could be a greater option to talk. However some authorities departments pushed again, arguing that fax machines have been safer than on-line communication.
Kono’s feedback adopted criticism early on within the pandemic in 2020 when medical doctors complained about having to handwrite paperwork on new COVID instances earlier than faxing the knowledge to public well being facilities as a part of the info assortment course of. A web-based reporting system was finally launched in August 2020.
However maybe we shouldn’t be too harsh on Japan. In any case, it was solely three years in the past that the U.S. army lastly ditched a Nineteen Seventies-era system that used floppy disks for the operational features of the nation’s nuclear forces, changing them with a solid-state digital storage resolution.
Kono’s struggle on floppy disks brings to thoughts one other episode in 2018 when, a month after being appointed as Japan’s cyber-security minister, Yoshitaka Sakurada brazenly admitted that he’d by no means used a pc.
“Since I used to be 25 years outdated and unbiased I’ve instructed my employees and secretaries,” he mentioned on the time, including: “I’ve by no means used a pc in my life.”
Sakurada is not in submit.
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