Tsu City
Best Practiceof Customer Relationship Management

Effective Utilization of Public Assets through Open-Data

A large amount of infrastructure and public facilities
was built in Japan during the period of rapid economic
growth of the late 1950s to the early 1970s, and much ofthis is now in need of reconstruction. The immense costof repairing, improving, and maintaining these facilities is
an issue that many municipalities face, under the current
economic conditions of decreasing population andreduced tax revenue due to the falling birthrate andageing population.
Tsu City established the “Tsu City Public Facilities
Comprehensive Management Plan” in January of 2017 toclarify the current state of public facilities and related
issues, and to show the course of action Tsu City will taketo address them. All municipalities in Japan are toestablish their own Public Facilities Comprehensive
Management Plans during the fiscal year of 2018, by
request of the Government.
Resolving these issues presents a major challenge, as
the City must consider ways of reducing facility
maintenance and management costs, while at the sametime meeting the expectations of citizens regarding
quality of life. To meet this challenge, it will benecessary to draw on the analytical and management
expertise of private businesses.

1Under the recognition that it is important for us to share
information with the private sector, we have beenpromoting a policy of open-data for public facilities, withthe aim of incorporating private-sector vitality into facility
management.
As mentioned above, municipalities across the country
are currently facing these same issues, and likewise arepromoting the implementation of open-data for public
facilities, representing a total asset value of 420 trillion
yen nationally. In addition to that, the Government has
set a target for expanding public-private-partnership(PPP) / private-finance-initiative (PFI) projects to thescale of 21 trillion yen in business by the year 2022. To
make this possible, new methods of fundraising and realestate asset management have also been introduced.
We hope that providing open-data for public facilities
in Tsu City will result in stimulating the private sector tocreate pioneering business models which make effective
use of public facilities as their speculative assets.

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Mayor of Tsu City
Yasuyuki Maeba

Utilization and application of assets – lands and buildings – is one of the mostinteresting themes for private companies as well as for local municipalities. I amvery proud that our efforts were recognized as a model of “Effective Utilization of
Public Assets through Open-Data”.
Tsu city has also, for the second consecutive year, received awards of “Best
Practice in Customer Relationship Management”, “Model Code of Conduct forCommitment to Service to the Public”, and “Model of Dialogue-based Interregional
Cooperation". These achievements are outcome of specific city plans andpolicies: Our “Code of Conduct for Commitment to Service to the Public” is basedon our “Code of Conduct for Officials of Tsu City Government”, and our“Dialogue-based Interregional Cooperation" modal-status came about due to the“Local Administration Management Plan of Tsu City Government”. Furthermore,“Effective Utilization of Public Assets through Open-Data” is an actual practicebased on the “Tsu City Public Facilities Comprehensive Management Plan”,
established in 2017. These plans and policies all reflect our local administration
management, which is based on the philosophy of Customer RelationshipManagement (CRM).
Customers of local governments are not limited to users of specific public
facilities and services, but also citizens who might not actually make use of thesefacilities or services directly, but still cover the cost of them indirectly through paying
taxes. From that point of view, all citizens are our customers, a fact which
presents a major difference between local governments and private companies.
Sound and highly transparent administration management is required to satisfy
citizens; accordingly, we commit ourselves to thorough discussion and information
sharing with the citizens of Tsu City.
In addition, it is the responsibility of local governments to provide their citizens
with services relating to essential aspects of their lives, such as welfare, education,and infrastructure, to meet their wishes and expectations while ensuring the3sustainable management of city government into the future. However, the current
situation of decreasing population and reduced tax revenue, due to a failingbirthrate and ageing of population, places limitations on sources of revenue as wellas human resources.
To overcome these challenges, we need exceeding ideas. We cannot besatisfied with the present situation. We need to commit ourselves to propose
various polices that go beyond citizens’ expectations. The officials in Tsu City
government will work hard and make the best use of our inventiveness, under the“Code of Conduct for Officials of Tsu City Government” and the principles of our
local administration management, in order to achieve new heights.
As well, we need to acquire the type of management skills that are utilized in
private companies, such as the ability for decisive action, a sharp sense of cost,and making effective use of accumulated business experience. To do so, we havebeen working to strengthen HR development and integrate IT effectively into ouroperations.
Tsu City will continue to promote its local administration management, based on
Customer Relationship Management, as the proud prefectural capital of Mie. We
will continue trying our best to create pioneering business models.

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Effective Utilization of Public Assets through Open-Data

Tsu City■ Overview
Tsu City Government

Tsu City is the capital of Mie Prefecture. It
has a population of about 280,000 people

Establishedand an area of about 711 ㎢, and came to

Address

take its current form in 2006 with merger of 2
cities (former-Tsu and Hisai), 6 towns(Kawage, Geino, Ano, Karasu, Ichishi and
Hakusan), and 2 villages (Misato andMisugi).

1st January, 2006
(Date of Merger)
23-1 Nishimarunouchi, Tsu City
Mie Prefecture 514-8611
TEL: 059-229-3273

Mayor

Yasuyuki MAEBA

Employees

2,561 (As of 1st April 2018)

URL

http://www.info.city.tsu.mie.jp/

An urban area closely situated to nature such as the sea, rivers and mountains,
Tsu City has a rich historical and cultural background, as well as many higher
educational institutes and government-related offices. It also has good access to
two of the three biggest cities in Japan (Osaka City and Nagoya City) and is packed
with various business centers of finance, commerce and industry.

Tsu City in Mie Prefecture(Tsu City is situated between two of the biggest cities in Japan, Osaka and Nagoya.)5■Background

Tsu City has been working to fulfill the promises made by the above-mentioned
cities, towns, and villages to their residents before the merger, as well as taking on
new challenges as a new city, all within a reasonable timeframe, by making gooduse of the merits which have arisen due to the restructuring.
Customers of the City include all the citizens living here, and our responsibility is toprotect their living and realize their individual happiness. To continue fulfilling this
responsibility, we need to maintain healthy and sustainable management as a local
government and also to apply more systematic local administrative management,
taking advantage of our resources – people, goods, capital, and information – justas many private companies do.

6【Our CRM】
Establishing plans and policies is not a goal in itself. To promote Customer
Relationship Management, we have been developing our own best practices byimplementing plans and policies while working together and co-operating with our
stakeholders, and introducing and utilizing the latest IT techniques.
In 2015, we established the “Code of Conduct for Officials of Tsu City Government”
to create the foundation of local administration management through building up
employees’ sense of purpose, in order to make the best use of a critical resource,
our people.
In 2016, we established “Local Administration Management Plan of Tsu City
Government” to create a better management style, including more effective
investment, in order to make the best use of our resource of capital.
In 2017, we established “Tsu City Public Facilities Comprehensive Management
Plan” to create a more efficient system of managing buildings and lands that belong
to the City, in order to make the best use of facilities and land-asset resources.
In 2018, we established new Tsu City Comprehensive Plan and Tsu City Urban
Design Master Plan to implement all the above-mentioned plans through concrete
actions, and also to connect with our past efforts and policies fitting into the next
10-year time frame.

7【Challenges Facing the City】
A large amount of infrastructure and public facilities was built during the period of
rapid economic growth in Japan, based on the assumption that population wouldgrow and tax revenue would increase as they had in the past, and most of this is
now in need of maintaining, repairing, improving and/or renewing. The cost of thisis immense and many municipalities now face the great challenge of how to coverit.
In the 12 years since the merger, Tsu City has been facing the same issues asother municipalities under the current challenges of decreasing population andincreasing cost of social welfare due to the failing birthrate and ageing population.
We have also reached a turning point of our financial framework. Tax allocation to
local governments has been reducing since 2016 as the central Government
gradually scales back preferential tax allocation measures for newly-merged cities.
Redemption of local bonds issued by new cities has also started. Under these
conditions, we need to tackle the issue of decaying public infrastructure and public
facilities.

【Our Approach to the Challenge】“Tsu City Public Facilities Comprehensive Management Plan” was established in
January of 2017 to clarify the current state of public facilities and related issues,and to show the course of action Tsu City will take to address them.
In the plan, we hold up our aim to create new investment resources and more
capital through use of the limited finances we have at the moment. To do so, weneed to use several channels to make the most use of our public facilities;
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combining current facilities, sharing the functions of each facility between multiple
communities, selling or lending unused lands & buildings, creating new uses forunused space within those facilities, and introducing PPP/PFI methods to their
management.
Our plan has the characteristics of optimizing the management of facilities, notthrough sorting them by category and setting a strict reduction target for eachcategory, but through coordinating various aspects of each facility based on
characteristic of the regions in which they are situated, their intended use,
relationship with other facilities (e.g. elementary schools) and then working todecrease the total number in the City.
This is because we are expected to improve the level of citizens’ satisfaction as
well as to make our facility management more efficient. We aim for higher
satisfaction from the citizens by responding to their latest needs. For example, in
facility management, combining the functions of various facilities can offer a
one-stop service to citizens.

【Communication with Citizens】
Communication with citizens is vital in optimizing the total number of public
facilities and their management. Citizens include the ones who directly use thefacilities and the others who do not directly use the facilities but bear the
maintenance and operation costs of the facilities through taxes. It is necessary for
us to take into account the various points of view held by these citizens.
Therefore, we utilize a specific framework to examine this issue, considering the9views of members of the community where the facility is situated, the users of the
facilities, and also input from third parties and professionals of facility management.
To have meaningful communication with citizens, we are committed to disclosing
necessary information on the current situation and issues faced by the City.
【Working Together with the Private Sector】
To succeed in managing our public facilities while responding to the various needsof citizens under the current, tight fiscal situation, it is necessary for us to draw upon
the specialist knowledge and capital of the private sector. We are looking to workwith private business to apply their management methods to the selling and lendingof unused lands and buildings, while promoting PPPs (public-private-partnerships)
and the PFI (private-finance-initiative).
To this end, we are working to disclose information related to public facilities, sothat private companies may come up with novel ideas for the use of those facilities.
In addition, we have been strengthening the development of human resources towork with the private sector. These efforts are necessary as the public sector
begins to adopt private-business-style management attributes such as the ability
for expedited decision-making and a sense of cost performance.

【Tsu City Public Facilities Comprehensive Management Plan – Framework 】
The promotion and management of public facilities is not only the responsibility of
the Facility Management Department, but involves the City Government as a whole.
Therefore, the “Discussion Group for Promotion of Tsu City Public Facilities
Comprehensive Management Plan” was created – consisting of the Mayor, 2 Vice
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Mayors and executive officials of the City Government – and designated as adecision-making body. Previously, we had managed public facilities as buildings
belonging exclusively to their respective departments within the City Government.
Presently, however, we consider public facilities in the context of their function in acommunity, managing them in a cross-sectional way, beyond each department’s
boundary of authority.
One example is of the centers used for the after-school childcare programs.
When the number of children exceeded the capacity of a given center, it wasalways a matter for the Board of Education, who holds the authority overeducational buildings, to decide whether/how/where and extension is built.
However, we now see it is a matter for the community in which the center issituated, and discuss solutions in a cross-sectional way.
If there is a
publicly-owned kindergarten nearby which has seen a heavy decrease in thenumber of children, we can discuss a way to use some of the kindergarten’s rooms
as an extension to the after-school care center, a process which involves several
departments related to public facilities in the area.
We also invite experts in the fields of asset management and construction as ouradvisors to this discussion group, and we ask for their advice and guidance in orderto lend objective, expert views to our reform of public facility management. In
addition, we have invited officials in charge of public facility management in otherleading municipalities, and have held several conferences of up to 100 attendees,
with more such activities on the horizon.
【Tsu City Public Facilities Comprehensive Management Plan – Public Opinion】
Before establishing the “Tsu City Public Facilities Comprehensive Management
Plan”, we surveyed citizens’ opinions on various topics pertaining to the City
Government, such as the issue of aging public facilities. This survey, sent to 3,000
randomly-selected participants, gave us insight into the views of citizens in various
communities across all age groups, which we took into consideration during thedrafting of our plan. Once the draft was completed, we posted it on our homepage
and sought public comments. After reflecting on the opinions collected from thesecomments, we held a counsel with the Tsu City Assembly.
Since the Plan was established, we have been providing information about it
through multiple channels such as a Cable TV city-information program, a video ofthe Mayor’s interview on YouTube, a series of articles in publicity papers, and apress conference with the Mayor.

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The Mayor’s Press Conference【Tsu City Public Facilities Comprehensive Management Plan
– Disclosure of Official Information and IT Utilization】
As one of our concrete measures to promote the Plan, we introduced an internet
auction system to sell unused public assets such as idle lands and deteriorated
buildings, opening up the process to a much wider range of potential bidders thanwould be possible using conventional methods of public bidding. We currently
use the “Yahoo Auction Site for Public Property of Government and Municipal
Offices” as an open platform of providing information on our facilities, due to thesite’s high operability and user-friendly interface.
We have also established a public “record of facilities” containing detailed
information about individual facilities, and “data on facilities” which shows thecurrent, overall situation regarding public property assets.

Example ofTransaction throughAuction in the Past

Tsu City HP

Yahoo Auction Site for Public Property ofRecord of Facilities

Government and Municipal Offices12【Tsu City Public Facilities Comprehensive Management Plan – Model Projects】
In 2017, we established “Misato no Oka Gakuen” which is the first 9-year
compulsory school in Mie prefecture, offering both elementary and secondary
education in one school. To make this happen, we combined 3 elementary
schools and 1 junior high school whose number of students had been declining
severely, and built a new school building to provide students with a unique,high-quality educational environment.
At “Misato no Oka Gakuen”, we are now able to provide distinctive lessons inEnglish and Community Studies to students as well as a better environment for
those working at and visiting the new school building, while dramatically cutting thecost of school management.
Another example is the establishment of the nursery school, “Tsu Midori no Mori
Kodomo En” in April of 2018, a facility which provides both day-care and pre-school
education to children. It is common that day-care is provided at day-care centersand pre-school education provided at pre-schools respectively, and parents must
make the decision which to register their children for. However, “Tsu Midori no
Mori Kodomo En” was established through the merging of 1 day care center and 3
nurseries to offer both day-care and pre-school services in one location. This is a
response to various societal factors, such as a change in needs of child-raising,increased demand for day-care and decreasing numbers of children enrolled at
pre-schools.
When we established “Tsu Midori no Mori Kodomo En”, we renewed the buildings
and premises of the closed pre-schools, re-tasking them as community centers,
something which citizens living in the area had been requesting for a long time.
We try our best to respond to the wishes of citizens while also working to minimize
the number of public properties, looking ahead to the future of the City.

Misato no Oka Gakuen (The first 9-year compulsory school in Mie Prefecture,offering both elementary and secondary education in one location)

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【Further Promotion of Open Data】
Working together with the private sector, it is important for us to disclosepotentially-useful information. We have been preparing a platform which will allow
the end-user to analyze data relating to our public facilities, such as facility users,
revenue, operating costs, age, area, and geographic information. Furthermore,
we are considering establishing a system where private companies can request
data from the City for a business-feasibility assessment of buying or renting a given
property.

【Promotion of PPP/PFI】
Many municipalities in Japan have been facing the issue of aging public property,
which has resulted in a movement towards open-data. In addition, the Japanese
Government has set a target of expanding PPP/PFI projects to a scale of 21 trillion
yen in business by year 2022 in their Action Plan, and have started introducing newmeasures related to real-estate asset management and fund-raising. Local
governments must also make use of the abilities of the private sector in order toaddress the challenges posed by a rigid financial situation, aging and unused
public properties, and diversified needs of citizens.
Public property has traditionally been managed by the National Government andlocal municipalities, and consequently there is no clearly-defined allocation ofprivate rights for such properties. In addition, the Government and local
municipalities carry out real estate transactions based on a fair price set byappraisal. This system is believed to be highly beneficial to private companies
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who seek a stable business environment.
Public properties sometimes include lands containing large-scale and quakeproof
buildings. In cases where such properties are no longer of use to local
governments as public-work projects, they may be useful for private companies, forexample as a satellite office or call center. The total amount of real estate inJapan is said to be valued at about 2,400 trillion yen, of which municipality-owned
public property amounts to about 420 trillion yen, compared to the value of private
property at around 470 trillion yen. The amount of public property held by the
National Government amounts to about 150 trillion yen, bringing the total
real-estate market value of public property in Japan to 570 trillion yen. Tsu City
Government is making concrete efforts to better utilize our public land assets. We
have set up a contact window at the Administration Management Division within
General Affairs Department of the City Government to take in various proposals
from private companies, and will continue our progress towards open-data todisclose useful information on our land assets to encourage pioneering businessenterprises.

【Business Opportunity Arising from Effective Utilization of Public Property】
There have likely been situations where it was challenging for private companies
to do business in metropolitan areas, due to a lack of available lands and buildings.
However, an environment to expand business has been established and it is now
possible to do business outside metropolitan areas because of well-preparedinfrastructure and advanced IT techniques.
At the same time, the current context of decreasing population has resulted in anexcess of public assets, allowing both National and local Governments to offer
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these assets to private companies as a stable platform to expand their business.
Likewise, the Japanese Government and local municipalities will promote
open-data on their public facilities, and there will be a massive amount of data
related to those assets. This environment presents an excellent business
opportunity for private companies who have expertise in asset management andmarket analysis, and at the same time local municipalities should take theopportunity to learn from this private-sector ‘know-how’.
In addition, the Japanese Government and local municipalities will actively
introduce PPP/PFI projects. Once an effective framework of public-property
utilization is established, it will be an advantage for private companies to expand
their business, seeking out the best-suited property among those provided by
1,788 local municipalities.
The result of this will not only be to resolve the issues faced by local municipalities
regarding public facilities, but also benefit communities through the creation of new
business and employment.
Tsu City always welcomes any ideas private companies have for the use of ourpublic facilities in their business.



連絡先

津市 政策財務部政策課
政策担当副主幹 フォレスト 幹子
電話番号：059-229-3101
FAX 番号：059-229-3330
メールアドレス：229-3101＠city.tsu.lg.jp

Contact Information:

Tsu City Government
Policy and Finance Department
Policy Division
Mikiko Forrest
TEL：059-229-3101
FAX：059-229-3330
E-mail：229-3101＠city.tsu.lg.jp

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