Alongside the birth of the Suga administration, examination of digitalization-related measures is accelerating rapidly. Denmark, which ranked atop the World E-Government Ranking (2020), has made digital IDs mandatory since 2001, and 96% of its citizens use a platform called “digital post” for performing administrative procedures electronically. In Estonia too, which similarly leads the pack in e-government, citizens 15 years of age and up are required to obtain an ID card. It is my belief that effective e-government cannot succeed unless all citizens have ID cards (Individual Number Cards). If the majority of Japanese citizens get an Individual Number Card, that itself would contribute greatly to the legacy of the Suga administration.
Nomura Research Institute (NRI) conducted an internal campaign for obtaining Individual Number Cards from February to September 2020, and as of September, about 5,200 employees, or 82% of employees in Japan, either have obtained Individual Number Cards or are in the process of obtaining them. Considering that related operations of human resources and general affairs departments can be significantly reduced if employees use the Individual Number portal to report various certificates for year-end adjustments sent online by financial institutions, I think that encouraging employees to obtain cards is very significant.

Shifting towards greater efficiency through digitalization of administration overseas

Behind the enthusiasm of Northern European countries for e-government lies the limits to deploying human resources to carry out administrative services to cities spread over a wide area, there limits being caused by population decline and a lack of public servants. Boasting a large number of excellent civil servants, Japan is somewhat different, but considering the progression of future population decline and depopulation, there is a high need for digitalization of administrative services in areas where administrative manpower is insufficient. The Estonian capital of Tallinn, which I visited in 2019, has a population of 440,000, but has only about 1420 city government employees (as of 2018). In contrast, the number of city hall employees of a certain prefectural office in Japan with a population of 520,000 was about 3270 people (also as of 2018). As there are few citizens visiting the city hall in Tallinn, where almost all administrative procedures are now done online, there are only a few employees at so-called reception counters.
From the perspective of enhancing resident services like health promotion and disaster prevention as well, the merits of digitizing administrative services are large. In the previous example of Estonia, all citizens can view their own portal sites to check their medical histories and medication histories since birth, among other things, all online. Citizen data has been opened up on the foundation of a database that utilizes blockchain technology called X-Road. Because citizens can control access to their data from the portal site, there is no need to worry about data being used arbitrarily.

Leading example in Japan: Digitalization initiatives advanced in Tsuruoka City

It unlikely that similar frameworks could be immediately deployed throughout Japan, but it is possible to utilize data at the local level to launch unique resident services suited to each region. For example, Tsuruoka City in Yamagata Prefecture has entered into a collaboration agreement with the Keio University Institute of Advanced Biosciences, which is located in the city, and has being carrying out the ongoing “Tsuruoka Mirai Health Survey”. This survey devised prevention methods and early inspection indicators for lifestyle-related diseases on the basis of health diagnostic information of residents provided by the city, questionnaire surveys distributed to residents, analysis results for blood and urine, etc., and genetic surveys, and it aims to use this information realize healthy and long-lived regional development. NRI concluded a basic agreement for collaboration activities with Tsuruoka City in December 2019, and is providing support for promoting structural reforms through the city’s digitalization. In fiscal 2020, Tsuruoka city was selected as an “SDGs Future City” and is promoting disaster prevention DX, medical health DX, education DX, and life traffic DX as part of an “Industrial Innovation Promotion Study Project” in a public-private partnership. In the area of medical health, which has seen some of the most progress, because medical institutions are dotted across a wide area and struggle to maintain medical services, the National Cancer Center (NCC) Hospital East and the Shonai Hospital, among others, have partnered together so that specialists from the NCC visit Shonai Hospital once a month to see patients, and they are also considering the establishment of an online partnership between the NCC Hospital East and the Shonai Hospital to conduct conferences, examinations, and treatments in the future. Further, the full-scale introduction of online telemedicine services, where the first visit is conducted at the hospital, and smartphones or other devices are used for subsequent visits, is also being studied.
In addition to enhancing health promotion and other resident services, the digitalization of administration also has large benefits for companies. For example, one possible reason that venture companies are concentrated in Northern Europe is that start-up costs can be minimized because the procedures for starting a company are done online. If we forge ahead in promoting digitalization in Japan’s regional cities, it will draw in entrepreneurs who sense the appeal of starting companies there.
By promoting the digitalization of regional hub cities to enhance ease of living and health, we will simultaneously create an entrepreneurial environment of regional industrial innovation hubs. With this approach, in Tsuruoka City, we have taken on the challenge of creating a model for regional revitalization based on local characteristics. Data-sharing and information system architecture may need common standards in Japan, but I think the visions that regions try to achieve through digitalization should be tailored to the uniqueness of each region, and not based on a one-size-fits-all approach. It is likely that local leadership will increasingly be needed.