Promotion of E-Government in Japan and Its Operation

INTRODUCTION

In Japan, e-government has been considered since 2001 as one of the strategies of so called “e-Japan” (Ohyama, 2003). It had been decided that e-government shall be constructed within the fiscal year 2003. Preparation in terms of the legal system and technological developments made steady progress towards that goal. The construction of e-government should alleviate residents’ burdens in terms of bureaucracy, enhance service quality rationalization, lean and transparent administrative agencies, countermeasures for natural calamities, more participation in policy making and administration by residents and so forth. Various tasks have been carried out at many places. For example, in autumn of2002 a “basic residential register network” was established. Its initiation enjoyed broadly smooth operation. Residents had received administrative services only within certainjurisdiction limits until then. Now they are free to enjoy access to any administrative services from anywhere in Japan thanks to this e-system. Some local authorities introduced electronic tenders to enhance transparency of administration. Some local authorities adopted an electronic voting system in part of their areas. This paper explains the details of how the construction of the e-government came about and the status of its operation.
In constructing an e-government, basic researches in respect of relevant individual electronic chores are necessary. In reality, however, planning and drawing up an idea will often be brought about, depending on certain actual domestic social circumstances of the legal systems or certain consensus within and between relevant representative bodies of the government. Because of such circumstances, we have decided to list up general magazines easily available which report often on these themes, and the most up-to-date URLs of relevant organizations of the Japanese government (see Appendix).


BACKGROUND

Information processing on the part of the public administration has progressed in line with each development of computers (Makiuchi, 2003). It followed the progress of information processing in the private sector. The first steps included, as early as the 70s, information processing for specified jobs such as accounting and salary payments. It also controlled systems of government offices on the basis of one PC per person, as personal computers spread around 1990, internet technologies were introduced, and so forth. In particular, the Patent Office in Japan adopted an online system for patent application to speed up the processing of patent applications and it did substantially increase.
Nevertheless, given the progress and more use of the information processing for administration, the mentality that it only simply meant computers would replace mechanical style jobs lived a long time. In addition, it exerted a negative influence in that the conventionally vertical administration confined the progress of the information processing for administration to specific ministries and offices. And it made services difficult to access from the standpoint of the people.
The Mori Cabinet came into power in 2000. He decided to shift the nation to the use of state-of-the-art information under his “e-Japan strategies”. He would emphasize the importance of information processing in Japanese society in order to get out of the economic slump. Objectives were placed in five fields; broadband infrastructure, education, public/administration services, e-commerce, and security. Among the items, administration services are selected so that e-government will be realized within the fiscal year 2003. Preparation in terms of legal systems and technological developments have made progress in that respect. Legal systems were reviewed. Now, there are the Online Transmission Regulations, Revised Basic Residential Register Law, Public Individual Certification Law etc. On the technological front, there were also some new introductions of electronic systems for administrative procedures, for example all-purpose reception system for applications, the introduction of a one-stop system for import/export harbor and taxation procedures as well as the electronic tender system. Electronic systems for revenue bookings allows payments per Internet and an online transfer system. The purposes of the introduction of information processing for administrative chore and business operations are; simplification of work for human resources, salaries, etc. and connection of the National Networks with LGWAN (Local Government Wide Area Network) owned by communalities.
Electronic procedures will be put into practice in various fields as described above. From their own perspectives, users consider more or less that the essential part of e-government is mainly the given opportunity of the electronic application and its ease.
E-government is one of the e-Japan Strategies in the Five Year Plan which started in 2000. Preparatory activities on legal systems and system construction are to be completed by March 2004. On the other hand, as regards set-up of broadband infrastructure, the objective was set that 30 million households would use it by the end of the fiscal year 2005. In reality, 50 million households (the actual number of subscribers is about 5.70 million) were able to use it as early as June 2002 due to the rapid progress of information telecommunication technologies. Partly as a result of these unexpected circumstances, e-Japan Strategies could enjoy another review only after one and half year of their inception.
E-Japan strategies seem to have advanced rapidly. An international comparison survey by a consultancy company called Accenture shows, however, that Japanese e-government ranked 17th.According to this study, the top three positions are Canada, Singapore and the USA. The same survey classifies and names these three nations as the “pioneering leaders”. Australia, which clad the 4th to the 13th positioning it calls the nations as “visionary challengers”. It calls the 14th positioning to Japan, which is the 17th, as “emerging performers” and the 18th onwards as “platform builders”. Whether or not they succeed in construction of e-government can be a good clue, a basis requirement for international competition for any country.

SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT CASES

Here are some cases of e-governments established on national scheme or at local authorities.

Basic Residential Register Network System

Resident registration cards, tax payment certificates etc. are normally applied for at the desk of an agency. The regional jurisdiction of a resident is responsible and issues them. E-government will enable any application at home or application and issuance from an office outside the resident district. Confirmation of the subject person beyond an administrative boundary and the necessary information exchange between administrative bodies in this respect becomes easier with the use of Basic Residential Register Network. The Basic Residential Register Law regulates undertakings for this system, how its operation should look and its practical use. Information contained in this system be the four items: name, birth date, gender, and address. It also contains resident card code numbers and information of any changes to them. The resident card code allows easy access to these four data items. It consists of eleven digits, selected at random, and will be issued only in Japan without duplication for any other person. This code can be changed at the request of the subject person. The system constellation is 3-fold in vertical; the levels consist of national, prefecture and municipalities. Depending on the distance between the “clients” making use of the common contents from each other, the option would be made which of the 3 levels of networks should be used. If two towns sit in the same prefecture, the communication server of one of the two towns and the dedicated line in connection with this server on the level of the prefecture would be used in order to communicate with the other town magistrate. If the communication should go to the level of prefecture-prefecture, the network of this constellation level would be working plus the national network involved. Communication servers have firewalls both inside and outside to prevent illegal access (Inoue, 2003; Yoshida, Mizokami & Watanabe, 2003)

Electronic Tender

Here is a case of Yokosuka City in Kanagawa Prefecture (Hirokawa, 2003). Up until the 1997, order placement of civil works in the city took place mainly by public tender in which 7-10 specified and pre-selected bidders could join the tender. However, it became known that there had been some collusions on the bidding. It was considered that reform is necessary. The tender system was changed in the fiscal year 1998 to a conditionally open tender where any business entity could participate, if inspection standards prescribed were satisfied. In the fiscal year 1999 information on order placements started to be shown on the agency’s homepage.It became possible for companies wishing to participate to confirm general picture of an order. Where is the site? What is the nature of this work? Firstly, a company wishing to bid will transmit a tender application form to the contracting section by facsimile. If confirmed that this company is qualified to participate, it will purchase design documents from a designated printing company, and draw up an estimate. Then it sends the tender documents poste restante at the Yokosuka Post Office by registered mail with a delivery certificate by the deadline. On the date appointed, the contract section of the magistrate will open all the tender documents collected at that time and chose the successful bidder with representatives of the participating companies witnessing. All the tender results will be publicized on the homepage after that. The effect is that the number of tender companies increased by 2.5 times on average before and after the reform. At the same time the annual average success ratio (the ratio of a successful bid to the expected price) declined from 95.7% before the reform to 85.7%.
In the fiscal year 2001, the series of procedures above were to be carried out by the Internet. The purpose is to further widen the door to bidding companies and save on administrative work of the contract section. Companies put in a tender bid on the tender document transmission screen first and then transmit it by the Internet. The tender documents will at once be transmitted to the server of the authentication bureau, where the guarantee of originality and perception time stamps are added. Then it will be transmitted to the contract section. In other words, the function conventionally carried out at a post office has been transferred to an authentication bureau. The average success bid ratio for this fiscal year fell as low as 84.8%.
Noteworthy is the fact that the reform of the tender system was brought about only with the strong will on the part of the personnel, with the mayor on the top, down to all those who worked on the reform who did not give up facing various forms of resistance.

Electronic Voting

For electronic voting there are two options, voting made from a household PC and another made by ballot. Both are under examination now. The former is carried out where an electronic voting paper is obtained by a household from a voting server. Here, voting contents are filled in and transmitted to a sum-up server. However, a security problem has been pointed out in cases of electronic voting by household. Some people held the view that it should be limited to persons with physical disability. On the other hand, electronic voting at a ballot is carried out in that on voting contents decisions will be made via touch panels. Also, an electronic pen can be used at the voting terminal. This has been put into practice in Niimi City, Okayama Prefecture and part of the Hiroshima City. Various technologies for voting have been proposed, but none of them has been developed enough in any of the business in e-government. The reason appears to be that the frequency of an election itself is low; at most, it is once in a year. Therefore, cost efficiency of system development is not clear as a result. Furthermore, security must be perfect etc. A voting logic where contents and choice of an individual voter will not be known, not only to others but also to the system itself, is under study. The system must cope with bribery and corruption and misuse of strong power, and there remain difficult issues to be solved (Kitagaki, 2003; Shiraishi et al., 2003).

Various Resident Services

In Yokosuka City (Hirokawa, 2003) Geographical Information Service (GIS) was introduced to enhance and reach greater efficiency of administrative services in order to facilitate residents’ participation in the regional community activities. Common use on the level of the municipal office was possible by integrating information owned by each division and bureau in the municipal office at one place, except for that information which would violate the protection of personal data. In the fiscal year 2002, Yokosuka City arranged so that citizens could obtain maps using Web-GIS from home. That was a result of an alliance with a map company in the private sector. On the Web site, information on medical institutions, bargain sales at shopping centers, sightseeing information, etc. became available. Many organizations and individuals such as the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, medical associations, SOHO workers etc. are engaged in preparation of these data and operation in cooperation.
In Kochi Prefecture (Ishikawa, 2003), the information super-highway has been in operation since the fiscal year 1997. Further improvement has been sought to accompany the preparation of the administrative networks and the changes in the information environment. In the fiscal year 2001, telecommunication services in the private sector started to be carried out as well, under a new basic conception. The main circuit of the information highway was changed from the previous 50Mbps to 2.4Gbps. Preservation control and stable operation throughout the year were guaranteed. In addition, main circuits were open to ISP (Internet service providers) and businesses in the private sector providing CATV services. They became compatible with IPv6, etc.
Sapporo City in Hokkaido showed its basic policy in the fiscal year 2002 amid the progress of various businesses with information technology in mind. It is considered a “city for cooperation between administration, citizens and enterprises”. It should be an ideal state of city management, the city listens carefully to residents’ voices. It started to operate a call center business to reflect this in administration. This center deals with various kinds of inquiries from citizens. The city has made experiments with citizens monitoring. Trial operation has further expanded since the fiscal year 2003. In addition, the city attempted to distribute IC cards. For example, it has prepared the environment to be able to use them for all the municipally operated subways.
Further, payment of administrative services with IC credit cards (Endo, 2003), provision of various electronic municipality software developed with the residents’ standpoints (Shimada, 2003), as well as technological issues of its operation (Maeda, Okawa & Miyamoto, 2003), are under examination.

DISCUSSION AND FUTURE TRENDS

Smooth application of e-government in the near future depends on the following factors. First, is the convenience of the portal site, especially seen from the user’s point of view. How quickly users can come across with the desired information at the portal site of e-government, is important. The electronic portals of the USA show construction standards for the portal of e-governments of each federal organization, state, etc. By doing so, each portal is linked organically to the whole. Compared to the case in the USA, some people point-out, the portal of the Japanese e-government does not give any thoughtful consideration to the integration of the whole. In fact, inconvenience may arise in that the same information must be input every time an electronic application is made to different representative bodies of the government without linkages to other representative bodies of the government.
The second factor is related to the present work contents and review of procedures. Basically, the information processing carried out by each representative body of individual governments has put in old procedures based on financial and accounting laws from the Meiji Era and shift them into electronic databases. Therefore, E-government now needs to reform the whole processing of work data as well as distribution structure, and change them to an effective and integrative work processing system.
The third is related to a greater efficiency of works and systems. In the future, review of excesses and deficiencies of procedures will be necessary. Experts will be required to add a new function conforming to the existing e-government. Experts sought must be fully familiar with both work contents and information technologies, and at the same time be able overview the whole landscape.
The fourth is related to the transfer of these works to the private sector. Outsourcing in the private sector will be necessary in order to raise the efficiency and rate of utilization of the introduced systems, and to reduce costs. At the same time, selection of outsourcing companies and contract contents are important in order for information of administration and individuals not to be leaked.
Lastly, all of the cases mentioned here are on-going projects, thus the relevant evaluation activity has not been yet done. In the near future, verification process ought to be planned.

KEY TERMS

Basic Residential Register Network: A network to confirm the being of a person, a subject. Its use is common throughout Japan and jointly operated by local authorities.
E-Government: The government and local authorities which construct an electronic processing system for administrative procedures with full command of information telecommunication technologies. It provides various kinds of services for residents in line with these.
E-Japan Strategies: The national strategies decided in the first conference of the Strategic Headquarters for the Promotion of an Advanced Information and Telecommunications Network Society (the IT Strategic Headquarters) held on the 22nd January 2001. It was laid on the IT basic strategies decided at the Joint Conference of the IT Strategic Conference and the Strategic Headquarters for Information Telecommunications (IT) Technologies (27th November 2000).
Electronic Tender System: A system to carry out a series of works from notification of order placement information on the homepage etc., application for tender participation, sending a tender document, opening tender documents to the public announcement of the result.
Electronic Voting System: A system to vote electronically, using an information terminal of a personal computer etc. Various technologies have been created to prevent illegal actions such as alteration of voting contents or the use of abstainers’ votes.
Online Communication Regulation Law: A law to enhance application in the administration, which is decided by laws exceeding 50,000, and cover all these laws for conducting application electronically. It is considered that this communication regulation law has completed the basic legal frameworks necessary for the e-government such as electronic signature law.
Public Individual Certification Law: A law to prepare a system to provide individual certification and authorization services in order to process on-line the public application and notification on-line.

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