The Cabinet approved bills Tuesday to promote the digitalization of Japan centering on the launch of a new government agency in September, with the coronavirus pandemic having exposed shortfalls in the country's provision of administrative services.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's government hopes establishing the agency and revamping computer systems at the central and local governments will boost the quality of services to the public after years of delay by the country in implementing digitalization initiatives.
The Suga government, which has placed top priority on digital reforms, aims to have the bills pass parliament during the current ordinary session through June.
"We want to promote Japan's digitalization and show visible results to the people," Takuya Hirai, minister in charge of digitalization work, told a news conference.
Japan has long been struggling to promote administrative reforms by utilizing information technology, despite having aimed at improvements since around 2000.
After the pandemic hit last year and the government decided to offer cash handouts across the board and subsidies to companies to keep people employed, it came under fire for a slow rollout of the measures.
Earlier this month, meanwhile, Suga apologized for the health ministry's failure to discover a technical glitch that had rendered its smartphone app for COVID-19 contact tracing useless for Android users since September.
The new agency designed to promote digitalization in the public and private sectors would be led by a minister and its top administrative post will be filled by a person tapped from the private sector.
The government plans to have around 500 people at the agency, of whom over 100 are expected to be civilian IT engineers.
The new entity will be tasked with promoting the "My Number" personal identification system, currently under the jurisdiction of the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, so that it can be utilized for the provision of benefits during emergencies like the current pandemic.
Under the planned legislation, the government is seeking to do away with "hanko" seals on official documents and paper documents for many administrative procedures. These have been important parts of the country's working or administrative culture but are viewed as a major factor delaying digitalization.
One of the related bills concerning computer systems used by the public sector would oblige local governments to introduce ones that meet central government standards, a step seen as helping local governments to communicate with each other and helping enhance the provision of public services.
