## Section 4

# Promotion of Informatization of Administrative Services

### 1. Realization of e-government

## (1) Promotion of broad-based optimization of governmental duties and systems

Regarding the promotion of e-government, the MIC has thus far been implementing a wide variety of measures based on the e-Government Construction Program (determined by the Liaison Conference for Chief Information Officers (CIO) of Respective Ministries in July 2003, partially revised June 2004). In addition to optimization of the duties and systems of various individual government agencies, in the future further broad-based optimization of the functioning of the entire government will be sought. In order to clarify the future vision in this regard, and deliberate on issues and initiatives surrounding the development of a shared governmental platform serving as the base for integration and centralization of governmental information systems and coordination of data, since June 2009 the MIC has held the Study Group on the Status of Development of Governmental Information Systems, and compiled and released interim results in August 2009 and a final report in April 2010.

In terms of procurement procedures (excluding public works projects, etc.), with regard to an electronic system for bid tendering and bid opening procedures, currently each individual government agency develops and operates such systems as needed. In order to optimize systems and procedures for governmental procurement (excluding public works projects), based on the Basic Policy (August 2008, decided by the Governmental Liaison Committee for the Promotion of Adoption of Electronic Government Procurement Procedures [excluding public works projects]), the Plan for Optimization of Procurement Procedures and Systems was formulated and decided by the Liaison Conference for Chief Information Officers (CIO) of Respective Ministries in August 2009. Henceforth, existing electronic bid tendering systems independently maintained and operated by individual governmental agencies for bid tendering and bid opening procedures will be abolished, and operations progressively transferred to a centrally managed and operated electronic procurement system.

## (2) Efforts to promote balanced development of online services

While past e-government initiatives have greatly expanded the transfer of administrative procedures to an online format, to the extent that as of the end of FY 2008, online application, reporting etc. is now possible for 92% of the targeted procedures, there are still a large number of procedures where online applications are not taking place or their use is extremely limited.

Based on the Action Plan for Online Usage Expansion (decided by the IT Strategy Headquarters in September 2008), steps are being taken to promote online usage by boosting the benefits and improving the user-friendliness of online procedures, particularly those widely conducted by Japanese citizens, as well as revising strategies for online procedures that are hardly used and have little hope of improvement, including shutdown of systems, taking into account the cost-benefit analysis and existence or non-existence of alternative procedures.

### 2. Realization of e-local governments

## (1) Construction of an e-local government infrastructure

e-local governments aim to upgrade administrative services and simplify and streamline administration through the use of ICT. In the future, with the advancement of ICT utilization including ASP and SaaS technology, even in local governments that have independently constructed and operate their own information systems, there will be a demand for a paradigm shift from “possession” to “utilization” of ICT, and construction and operation of more efficient information systems making active use of recent technological innovations in the ICT field, such as cloud computing, etc.