NIRA RESEARCH REPORT
January 2022

Local Empowerment in the Era of Digitalization
Shigeki Uno

Executive Vice President, NIRA /Professor, The University of Tokyo

At the heart of the digital transformation is a shift in the provision of services
from a supply-oriented product out mentality, to one that redefines services aroundthe perspectives and needs of end users. This shift has led the digital transformation
to become a truly inseparable part of citizens political participation. Given this new
reality, a key question becomes how to inspire people to participate politically andempower them with the tools they need to build up their local and regional
communities in the era of digitalization? To shed light on this important issue, NIRA
interviewed four experts in the fields of digitalization and community development.
Rieko Oda, President of the Consortium for Public-Private Co-Creation,highlights the current state of affairs in which data is underutilized at all levels ofgovernment and political decision making in Japan. She emphasizes the importanceof increasing the number of citizens who recognize the direct impact of local politics
on their lives and come to see it as “their business,” rather than an issue to be left tosomeone else. Yuji Yoshimura, a specially appointed associate professor at the
University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, follows
up by suggesting Barcelona’s Decidim initiative, a free and open-source participatory
democracy platform for cities and organizations, may serve as a model for driving
increased civic participation. One of Decidim’s core tenants is allowing ordinary
citizens to be involved in policy proposals through deliberations on a digital platform.
On the other end of the spectrum, Masahiko Shoji, a professor at Musashi
University's Department of Sociology points out that the very idea of “digital
democracy,” poses significant challenges to society. Two of the most significant issues
include the overemphasis on solutionism in ICT and the negative externalities, suchas political polarization, that have occurred in response to the popularization andmass adoption of ICT. Nonetheless, he believes that the launch of Japan’s Digital
Agency has created a powerful tailwind for the country’s digitalization, the fate ofwhich may well hinge on how well the country can ride that wind of change. Finally,
Kei Wakabayashi, editor of the book “GDX - Government Digital Transformation:
Principle and Practice” which covers the digital transformation in the executive
branch of government in multiple countries, believes the key to success lies inrecognizing the essence of the digital transformation as a move toward a more “usercentered” future.
The goal of digitalization should be to harness its power to connect people,
bring communities together, and achieve tangible, positive change in people’s lives.
While such change is not risk free, the negative aspects of digitalization can beovercome, and the digital transformation can bring about new possibilities for thedevelopment of democracy and the revitalization of regional areas.

Copyright Ⓒ 2022 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement
This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation
presented here. Translated by Jonathan Webb.

NIRA RESEARCH REPORT
January 2022

1. Introduction
With the establishment of Japan’s Digital Agency in September of 2021, the term
“DX” shorthand for Digital Transformation has exploded in the public consciousness.
However, the term “digital transformation” encompasses much more than a simple
digitization of existing “analog” information. Digitalization enables people around theworld to create, access, share, and edit vast amounts of information, bringing together
people, information, and regions that were not previously interconnected. Through thisprocess, new values and services arise that fundamentally alter the preexisting economic,
political, social, and administrative structures, revolutionizing both national and regional
governance. The digital transformation is nothing short of revolutionary, and in this sense,“DX” or digital transformation, should inevitably lead to a “GDX,” a “Government Digital
Transformation.”
Kei Wakabayashi argues that DX is “about shifting the starting point of services
from the 'producer' to the 'end user'1.” At the core of the digital transformation then, is thereformation of services around the perspective of the end users of those services, replacing
the traditional model centered on service providers. In urban development for example, it
is critical to expand the scope of involvement beyond field specialists and government
officials, to include the residents who actually live in those cities. The residents, the end
users of cities, should be encouraged to consider what they want from their living
environment, to pursue what they believe in so that they are invested in and feel a senseof ownership over the development of their locality. In that sense, the digitaltransformation is truly inseparable from political participation by local citizens.
This report therefore examines “Local Empowerment in the Era of Digitalization,”with the key question being how digitalization can be used to empower residents of local
communities to take things into their own hands, recreating and reshaping theircommunities as they desire? What follows are excerpts from interviews conducted withfour experts on the digital transformation that point toward tentative answers to thatquestion.

2. Digitalization, Local Government, and Regional Politics
Rieko Oda, President of the Consortium for Public-Private Co-Creation, has held a

1 (Wakabayashi (2021:9))

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Copyright Ⓒ 2022 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement
This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation
presented here. Translated by Jonathan Webb.

NIRA RESEARCH REPORT
January 2022

variety of positions in business, politics, and government during her career, including
corporate systems strategist, local legislator, and now the founder of a platform for value
creation in the public and private sectors.
Ms. Oda argues that the reality is that data, particularly long-term data, isunderutilized by decision-makers at all levels of politics and government in Japan.
Outside of generalized long-term planning, most Japanese government planning is craftedwith a time span of three to five years. The problem is that the data used in drafting theseplans is typically limited to the same three- to five-year time span as the plan itself, withplanners finding it difficult to utilize longer-term population and economic forecasts. Ms.
Oda notes that although this difficulty is partially related to the issue of responsibility ifsuch longer-term forecasts turn out to be off, it is primarily a symptom of the general
failure within the Japanese government to effectively share data beyond the departmentthat collects it. This problem is so severe that even information as basic and important as
past government budgets and spending is distributed in formats (such as on paper or via
non-machine-readable PDFs) that do not allow the parsing and utilization of data at thesubsection level.
There also exists a mountain of challenges facing local legislatures. Ms. Oda points
to the lack of debate among council members beyond their own factions, the lack ofinteraction with citizens outside of neighborhood associations and industry groups, andthe way in which local elections have ceased to function as an effective means for citizens
to evaluate the results of political decision-making. From the standpoint of the authors of
this report, this is particularly problematic for Japan’s future, given the importance ofensuring the voices of the young and child rearing generations are reflected in public
policy. The unfortunate reality is that even for citizens with an active interest in public
policy, access to their elected representatives is extremely limited.
Believing that the number of advocates seeking “change” or reform withincommunities has been decreasing, Ms. Oda has sought to counteract this trend by creating
and operating end to end matchmaking and support services that facilitate exchange
among council members of differing factions and constituencies, enable citizens toevaluate the policy-making of council members, and build coalitions between government
agencies and business to tackle local issues. She emphasizes the importance of increasing
the number of citizens who recognize the impact of local politics on their lives by helping
them gain successful experience petitioning legislators, engaging with local council
members, and institutionalizing ways to ensure their voices are heard on issues that
directly impact their lives such as childcare and disaster prevention. Increasing the civic

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Copyright Ⓒ 2022 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement
This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation
presented here. Translated by Jonathan Webb.

NIRA RESEARCH REPORT
January 2022

awareness of even one additional person, helping them to understand that local politics is“their business,” can be the start of something important in the long run. The importantquestion thus becomes how digitalization can empower citizens to better participate insuch efforts to ensure the political system better reflects their desires.

3. The Decidim Platform Pioneered in Barcelona
Considering the above, the Decidim trial in Barcelona, Spain provides aninstructive example. Yuji Yoshimura, an expert in the field of AI and big data in urban
development, is familiar with the Decidim trial in Spain among other relevant studies,
having previously worked for the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona and the Advanced
Transportation Center of Catalonia.
In 1967, the city of Barcelona became an early adopter amongst governingorganizations in creating its own information and communication technology (ICT)department with dedicated staff who were experts in the field, the forward looking“Institut Municipal d'Informatica” or IMI. The IMI sought to create “a digital platformthat promotes deliberation,” and that platform evolved into Decidim. According to Dr.
Yoshimura, a prominent example of the impact of such platforms is in urban planning.
Urban planning is traditionally a top-down process but is now undergoing a major shift
toward being a more bottom-up process that incorporates the views of those who alreadylive in the area. One prominent example of this is the large-scale pedestrianization ofBarcelona's streets. The project was designed to involve residents of each district indiscussions to envision the future of the district. However, gathering a representative
sample of public opinion across Barcelona would normally be very difficult. That is wherean ICT platform such as Decidim demonstrates its value by making the impossible
possible. The basic flow of Decidim is that proposals that are first approved by a large
number of citizens through deliberation on a digital platform and are then put before thelocal council.
The first phase of the Decidim platform trial in Barcelona took place between 2016
and 2019 and saw roughly 40,000 citizens participate, resulting in about 1,500 policy
proposals. Currently, the second phase of the Decidim project is underway. The city has
also introduced “Participatory Budgeting,” in which about 3% to 5% of the city's budget
is determined through citizen discussion. Because of its open source nature, the Decidim
project’s impact travels far beyond Barcelona , being currently in use in 180 countries
and municipalities around the world. In Japan too, some municipalities are

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Copyright Ⓒ 2022 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement
This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation
presented here. Translated by Jonathan Webb.

NIRA RESEARCH REPORT
January 2022

experimenting with Decidim including Shibuya Ward in Tokyo and Kakogawa City in
Hyogo. In the Shibuya Mama-Chari Project, Decidim is being used to gather diverse
opinions from citizens on the use of bicycles in urban areas.
Such projects are a window into the ways that digitalization could be utilized inJapan, slowly adapting to, and reshaping the country’s political and administrative
landscape and civic culture.

4. Is “Digital Democracy” Truly Achievable?
While digitalization holds great promise for civic engagement, the reality is that
there are still many challenges to achieving adequate and equitable civic participation.
Masahiko Shoji ’first became interested in digital democracy and the application of ICT
solutions to social problems when he entered university in 1996. Throughout his career,
he has worked tirelessly on the social development of ICT platforms, including advising
the government on digital reforms.
Professor Shoji’s early research focused on the rise and fall of electronic bulletinboards. Electronic bulletin boards were once seen as having the potential to transform
civic engagement in governance, with a number of trials leading some to refer to it as “edemocracy.” Such praise proved premature however, with the number of such bulletinboards declining significantly by the early aughts. Around 2005, as social networks firstbegan to emerge, nascent attempts at community self-governance using these platforms
began to develop. However, by the end of the decade local social networks began to
decline, and the 2010s saw the emergence of global platforms such as Facebook andTwitter. In 2009, at the dawn of this period, US President in Barack Obama, issued amemorandum titled “Transparency and Open Government” shortly after taking office.
The memorandum outlined the three principles of open government: transparency,
participation, and collaboration. This was followed by the “Arab Spring” and “Occupy
Wall Street” movements, and the emergence of so called “pirate” parties affiliated withhackers winning seats in parliaments across Europe and around the world. In East Asia,
social movements utilizing social networking services have gained momentum
throughout the region particularly in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Much progress was also
made in the development of a wide variety of applications that use ICT to solve problems
in local communities. These developments led Professor Shoji to place open government
at the center of his research.
At the same time however, Professor Shoji notes that challenges to digital
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Copyright Ⓒ 2022 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement
This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation
presented here. Translated by Jonathan Webb.

NIRA RESEARCH REPORT
January 2022

democracy have been present since ICT’s very inception. The first major problem has
been the “popularization” of ICT. What started small, initially being the purview of asmall number of highly skilled specialists, would go on to be freely used, developed andexpanded by people sometimes called “hackers,” and it was those who inherited that free,rebellious spirit, the “geeks,” who would become the initial driving force of theinformation society. During this time, in the 1990s, the hope was that amateur
individuals would make decisions independently of each other, thereby increasing theaccuracy of collective knowledge. The reality, however, is that as it has developed thiscollective has increasingly begun to function as a kind of mob, a self-reinforcing echochamber in which those who interact the most receive validation from hearing their own
views reflected back at them.
The second major challenge came with the development of digital advertising andmarketing technology. It quickly became clear that personal information would be used,
analyzed, and subjected to advertising, manipulation, and screening. A case in point,
while social media undoubtedly helped Barack Obama win the presidency in 2008, it wasalso a driving force behind the election of Donald Trump eight years later. From 2016
onward, the rose-colored glasses, tinted by hopeful optimism, that once beautified ICT,
were firmly in the rearview mirror, and the fear of its abuse at the hands of the digitalsurveillance state was at hand.
The third challenge Professor Shoji points to is “solutionism,” a term coined by
Evgeny Morozov, to encapsulate a way of thinking that engineers tend to have, in which
they overfocus on solving the problems at hand, failing to see, let alone seek to address
their underlying causes. The same can be seen in government, where policy makers
become too focused on the individual demands of the public, become overwhelmed, andfail to see or have the capacity to address the need for more systemic change.
All of that said, Professor Shoji believes that the establishment of the Digital
Agency of Japan has strongly bolstered the tailwind for ICT in Japan, much as the IT
Basic Law of 2001 did two decades earlier. Thus, the fate of digitalization in Japanesesociety will depend on how well the government can take advantage of this tailwind going
forward to set Japan up for success in the coming decades.

5. The End Goal of the Digital Transformation
Kei Wakabayashi, editor of the book “GDX - Government Digital Transformation:
Principle and Practice” mentioned at the beginning of this article, has worked as the6
Copyright Ⓒ 2022 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement
This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation
presented here. Translated by Jonathan Webb.

NIRA RESEARCH REPORT
January 2022

editor-in-chief of both Heibonsha's “Monthly Sun” and the Japanese edition of WIREDMagazine, before going on to found Blkswn Publishers Inc. Mr. Wakabayashi points outthat as digitalization, which first engulfed the business sphere, and has now permeated
all levels of society, continues its revolutionary march across the world, the last majorcommercial holdouts to full-scale digitalization are likely to be in finance and medicine.
This is because both of these industries are heavily regulated by the government, andthus, find it difficult to change unless the government is already on board and has madesimilar changes itself.
Foreseeing the necessity of government adoption, Mr. Wakabayashi began
examining digital transformation in the executive branch of government. After surveying
the situation in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Australia, and other countries, Mr.
Wakabayashi came to feel that the essence of success in a digital transformation of
government lies in a “user-centric” approach to setting goals. The countries that havesuccessfully integrated the digital transformation into their executive branch all operate
in a manner that prioritizes “outcomes,” as goals. For these governments, the success(logic model) of each project is defined as measuring the degree to which specific inputs(resources) and activities, lead to specific outputs and ultimately to desired outcomes (thedesired and ultimate impact on people). What is important here is not a simple measureof a project’s output, but how that output ultimately impacts people’s lives, that is to say,its “real-life outcome.” Put another way, no matter how much output a project achieves,if people, the users, do not feel any significant change in their lives, the project iseffectively meaningless. It is here that Mr. Wakabayashi notes that in Japan, theunfortunate reality is that both the government and businesses tend to approach
digitalization in an output centric manner, self-congratulating themselves on achieving
output metrics that are insensitive to the real-life outcomes that are so critical to aneffective digital transformation.
Mr. Wakabayashi is quick to point out that good “user-centric” design encompasses
much more than just end users and must also extend to those actually working to provide
the service, who are themselves users. Particularly in the case of government, civil
servants who provide services to citizens at all levels of the state administrative
apparatus must be considered as key end users. If a system is not easy for them to use it
cannot ultimately be said to be user-friendly. Only by empowering such officials can anenvironment in which free and diverse opinions that improve the quality of services
provided to citizens can emerge. A digital transformation that views such people as
merely the target of optimization and process rationalization, is not a transformation at
all and will never succeed. Mr. Wakabayashi emphasizes that one of the goals of DX
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Copyright Ⓒ 2022 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement
This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation
presented here. Translated by Jonathan Webb.

NIRA RESEARCH REPORT
January 2022

should be to make on-site systems more user-friendly and to build a system that allows
various experiments and trial-and-error.
Interestingly, Mr. Wakabayashi noted that the Danish and Australian state
governments felt very “human,” despite the fact that the digital transformation implies
a focus on technology. He believes that the core of a successful digital transformation isin changing bureaucratic systems into more flexible and humanized systems, asuggestion that warrants greater attention.

6. In Conclusion
As mentioned above, the purpose of harnessing the power of digitalization should
be to bring together people and communities through the sharing, editing, and use ofdiverse information, which should bring about tangible positive change in the lives ofusers, and thereby communities. By gathering together the diverse knowledge,
experiences, and opinions of the citizenry, the institutional culture of business andadministration can be changed, raising expectations for more broadscale reform ofpolitics, society, culture, and governance. Of course, digitalization, like any technology
has negative externalities and the temptation to look at its potential through rose coloredglasses must be avoided. However, such challenges can be overcome, and in the process,the digital transformation can become a powerful force for the revitalization of local
communities and the potential renewal of democracy itself.

Reference
Wakabayashi, K (2021). GDX - Government Digital Transformation: Principle andPractice. Institute of Administrative Information Systems.

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Copyright Ⓒ 2022 by Nippon Institute for Research Advancement
This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese. NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation
presented here. Translated by Jonathan Webb.