After all, the Japanese are finally about to stop using ‘old fashioned’ floppy disks

According to Nikkei, the Meguro district government will move all data stored on floppy disks and other physical storage media to online storage this year. The Chiyoda district government plans a similar transformation within the next few years. Meanwhile, Minato prefecture has completed the digital transformation from floppy disk to online system since 2019.

However, the ‘reluctance’ of administrative agencies in Tokyo to give up outdated floppy disks, shows that the digital transformation process that the Japanese government is trying to make is still full of obstacles.

Yoichi Ono, manager of public funds for Meguro prefecture, said floppy disks “almost never get corrupted and lose data”. The county government has long stored information about ’employees on 3.5-inch floppy disks, then transferred to the bank for processing.

Notably, floppy disk storage continues to exist in Japan, even though these storage devices have long since disappeared from the market. Sony, one of the world’s first manufacturers of 3.5-inch floppy disks, stopped selling them a decade ago.

However, obstacles such as floppy disks that can overwrite & store data an unlimited number of times, or the fact that Japanese agencies have a large number of floppy disks, have prevented Japanese officials from interested in upgrading to a newer storage system.

However, that changed in 2019, when Mizuho Bank notified the Mizuho prefecture government that it would begin charging 50,000 yen ($438 at current exchange rates) a month to customers who use flash drives. physical storage, including floppy disks.

Accordingly, the fact that floppy disks are no longer produced, while the cost of maintaining floppy disk readers is too high, has forced this bank to collect fees.

On the part of administrative agencies, being forced to spend an additional 5,000 USD/year has inadvertently promoted the digital transformation process here. Accordingly, all data related to external systems will now be stored on the network.

“This will save our departments a lot of time saving data to floppy disks and carrying them around,” said Yoichi Ono, Meguro prefecture’s public fund manager.

For the Chiyoda district government, the transformation is part of a plan to completely rebuild the system by 2026. Authorities set a goal of allowing residents to complete paperwork online, instead of having to directly to the district office.

However. Full digital transformation is still a long way off. For example, authorities still have plenty of time to deal with tasks such as digitizing paper contracts.

Refer to Nikkei