Silviase/jgov_v1.4_full_ann huggingface dataset:
increase the demand for investment.

Also, by using the private sector’s capital and know-how, we expect to be able to reduce operational costs through the efficiency of operations, and contribute to reducing the financial burden. The VFM (Value For Money) $ ^{44} $ can be used as an indicator for evaluating whether having a business run by a private entity would lower costs as compared to the same business being run by a public entity. When we analyzed the VFM trend of PFI projects in the land, infrastructure, and transport sector by looking at the percentage of operation cost within the total projects expenses, the highest VFM distribution was for the operating cost ratio at 40-60% (Figure 2-2-13). It was assumed that PFI projects that were set up for maintaining and managing social infrastructures would account for a considerable percentage of the operating costs, making it likely that it would drive up the VFM. In addition, the analyses results show that the bigger the scale of the project,

and the longer the project period, the higher the VFM, and from this it is reasoned that the bigger the scope for using the private sector know-how, the greater the cost reduction effect will be on operating costs.

Furthermore, there is also the important aspect of raising the service standards by using the private sector know-how. The hope is that giving the operators enough freedom in business operations will allow the private sector to know-how to demonstrate its full potential, creating a cycle where the number of users increases due to higher service standards, which will then lead to profitability for the operators.

Examples of service standards being improved by using PFI for a social infrastructure maintenance and management project can be found in other countries. For example, when a resident's satisfaction survey was conducted regarding a PFI projet being used for overall road management in Portsmouth, UK, the results showed that the level of satisfaction had gone up by 22% for road maintenance and management, and by 19% for street cleaning. In addition, the annual number of complaints regarding accidents went down from over 200 cases a year to 40 cases a year, showing that service standards have improved $ ^{Note\ 45} $ (Figure 2-2-14).

Figure 2-2-14

Road Construction and Improvement by Controlling Roads Management PFI Projects in the City of Portsmouth

Source) http://www.streets-ahead.uk.com/home.asp

Note 45 According to Japan Society of Civil Engineers Construction Management Committee “Research report on comprehensive road repair, maintenance, and management by PFI”
According to the ‘Public Awareness Survey,’ regarding maintenance, management and upgrading of social infrastructures, the percentages for people that expect PPP/PFI to be effective for “reduction in maintenance, management and upgrading costs” and “improvement in service standards by using private sector know-how” has increased, and the expectation is that using PPP/PFI will result in cost reduction and service standard improvement (Figure 2-2-15).

It has been predicted that the financial situation for both national and local governments will become more and more challenging, increasing the necessity of using PPP/PFI in the future. Instead of merely shifting the public entity businesses to the private sector to reduce the financial burden, we need to use the private sectors' know-how to its maximum potential to create new value, like cost reduction and service standard improvement, that were not possible for public entities to accomplish on its own. In addition, creating mechanisms for new funds—such as infrastructure funds—to flow to the maintenance, management, and upgrading of social infrastructures will also play an important part in expanding the PFI market.

## Column PFI in Edo Period—Construction of Canals by a Wealthy Merchant—

The Takasegawa River—a river in Kyoto famous for being the setting of the novel “Takase Bune” written by the great novelist Ogai Mori—is a canal constructed during early Edo period by the wealthy merchant Ryōi Suminokura and his son Soan, using a method that could be called the Edo period PFI. Until this time, there had been examples of infrastructure development done by religious leaders, as in the case of Gyoki, but most of it was done by the current policymaker. However, during this period, against the backdrop of economic development of foreign trade, financiers called wealthy merchants began to play an active part, and a financier named Ryōi Suminokura stepped forward to become the new bearer of infrastructure development.

Ryōi was famous for conducting red-seal certificate trade (trading licensed by the shogunate), and is said to have sailed as far as An Nam (present day Vietnam) and made a huge profit. While accumulating capital in this way, Ryōi, instead of newly investing in horses and oxen for land transportation, set his sights on using ships on water, a cheap way to transport large cargo. The method of shipping cargo by water had existed since ancient times, but the Kamo River flowing through the city of Kyoto was a rampaging river that had flooded so many times that it had been named
percentage, followed by those that replied, “There is no particular merit.” In contrast, in terms of demerits, most of the contractors chose, “Because it is a single collective order for several businesses, I cannot receive the order without forming a joint venture with another company,” or “Because it was a multi-operational, multi-year contract, not receiving the order has a major impact,” showing that overall the percentage of answers that chose demerits is higher (Figure 2-219). In addition, for the question asking if we should continue to expand the comprehensive work consignment to private sector method of ordering, only 4 companies replied, “Yes I think so,” while 8 companies replied, “No I don’t think so.”

When we asked the same questions regarding comprehensive work consignment to private sector to construction contractors in the ‘Survey regarding Maintenance, Management, and Repair Businesses for Contractors,’ most of them replied that the merit would be, “The multi-year contract makes it possible to forecast business volume,” and “We can use discretion based on the site conditions to lower costs,” while the number of replies that answered, “There is no particular merit,” was fewer than the replies from the Fuchu City contractors’ survey (Figure 2-2-20). Also, the bigger scale companies with more employees tended to have higher ratios of merit replies for each item. Meanwhile, most replies chose, “Because the administrative engineer (supervisor) must be dedicated to the project for a long period, there is a bigger burden on the engineers,” as the demerit, while the percentages of replies that chose, “Because it is a single collective order for several businesses, I cannot receive the order without forming a joint venture with another company,” or “Because it was a multi-operational, multi-year contract, not receiving the order has a major impact,” were lower compared to the percentages from the Fuchu City contractors’ survey $ ^{Note47} $ .

Figure 2-2-20

Advantages and Disadvantages of Comprehensive Work Consignment to Private Sector (for construction companies by the number of employees)

Perceptions regarding comprehensive work consignment to private sector seems to vary according to regional trends, so it is difficult to come up with a categorical explanation. However, from the results of these surveys, there seems to be a trend that the bigger the scale of the company, the more likely they are to perceive merits, while the smaller scale businesses seem to strongly perceive demerits. In the case of Fuchu City, most of the contractors surveyed tended to be smaller scale businesses that specialized in doing one specific field of construction. Therefore, the marked trend in the survey results is thought to be due to the fact that comprehensive work consignment to private sector would not allow for the standalone orders, combined with a sense of unease over the comprehensive work consignment to private sector being used for the first time.
to maintenance, management, and upgrading works, or by helping with beautification, cleaning, inspection, and reporting. This shows that residents would rather participate in actual maintenance and management work rather than bear additional financial burden (Figure 2-2-25).

From these results, we can see that before we increase financial burden for future maintenance and management of social infrastructures, it would be better to find ways of having residents participate by taking on a part of the maintenance and management work.

Next, the ‘Public Awareness Survey’ asked for opinions regarding alternative ways of living and finding transportation for when the current level of operations became unsustainable. If responses that put “private car or motorcycle” as the current mode of daily transportation are excluded from the count, a high percentage of responses chose either “Maintain current service standards, even if the cost rises for individual users,” or “Maintain current level of cost for individual users and bear with service standards being pared down to bare minimum,” followed by the percentage that chose “I would move to an area in the city center where transportation is not an issue.” Compared to the previous survey regarding participation in the maintenance, management, and upgrade of social infrastructures, for things like public transportation—which has a direct bearing on daily life—there is a stronger tendency for people to consider the rise in financial burden for maintaining current service standards an unavoidable necessity. However, as this tendency is only seen in residents that use public transportation daily, we would
need an approach that would encourage residents who use private cars for daily transportation—which happens to be the majority—to also have an interest in voluntarily supporting the region’s public transportation (Figure 2-2-26).

Resident participation in the maintenance and management work is very meaningful in that participating in the maintenance and management of social infrastructure that they themselves use, residents will gain a better understanding of the infrastructure’s situation and share in the awareness of existing problems. Below, we will introduce some social infrastructures in which residents of the region participate in maintenance and management.

## (2) Example of Resident Participation

(Residents' Participation in Maintenance and Management of Social Infrastructure)

Various aspects of social infrastructure have started initiatives that help residents of the region feel a close affinity to the social infrastructure, and allows them to voluntarily participate in proactive maintenance and management.

## ☑ Becoming a City Supported by its Citizens ~Collaboration Report Demonstration Experiment, ‘Chiba Repo’~

To meet the needs of the residents as well as possible, resident participation is indispensable for the maintenance and management of social infrastructures. We therefore need to create a system that would allow for such participation. In Chiba City, Chiba prefecture, they are using smartphones and PCs as part of the mechanism for making residents' participation easier, conducting a demonstration experiment where citizens could submit various issues to a dedicated website called, 'Chiba Repo (Chiba Report)' $ ^{Note\ 49, Note\ 50} $ .

When citizens find spots in the city area—such as parks and roads—that need work done, they can send a report via their smartphones or other devices, with the location information and a picture attachment to 'Chiba Repo,' the dedicated website for these reports. The submitted reports are then published on the website $ ^{Note\ 51} $ . Previously the reports were sent via landlines and emails, which meant that the information was only shared between the citizen submitting the report and the administrator that received the report. Now, by publishing the report on a website, the information regarding a regional issue is not only shared by the citizen submitting the report and the administrator, but is widely available to be shared (Figure 2-2-27). Furthermore, because the responses to the reports (issues) by the government are also posted online, citizens can check to see what has happened to an issue they had reported, making the whole procedure a transparent process.

Note 49 Conducted over a period of six months, from July 1 to December 27, 2013.

Note 50 A similar initiative is being conducted in Handa City, Aichi Prefecture.

Note 51 Information that fall under privacy and non-disclosure criterion are not disclosed.
850 citizens participated in this effort, along with 391 city officials, and the citizens who participated were mainly between 30 – 50 years old (Figure 2-2-28). Even before this initiative, the number of telephone queries regarding regional issues totalled around 16,000 calls annually (13,000 calls for roads, 3,000 calls for parks). Using ICT (Information and Communication Technology) made it possible to have the contact line open 24 hours. Introducing the ‘Chibarepo’ seems to have made it easier for citizens to participate, even for those who used to not make contact for reasons like, “I wanted to call in over the weekend but the city hall was closed,” or “I hesitated to make a phone call even though I noticed a defect in the infrastructure.” If we look at the breakdown of posts received during the

Figure 2-2-28 Circumstances of Participants (Citizens)

experiment period by the time of day the post was submitted, there seems to be slightly more submissions in the morning. This is thought to be due to citizens finding issues with the infrastructure on their way to work or school (Figure 2-2-29).

The number of effective reports submitted during the experiment period was 628 reports, and 85% of these reports were submitted via a smartphone device. If we look at the reports by category, road-related issues were the overwhelming majority with 72%, followed by park-related issues at 11%, garbage-related issues at 5%. 12% of issues reported were categorized as 'Other' (illegal parking, defects in facilities, weeds growing on city-owned land, vacant houses, faulty crime prevention lights) $ ^{Note\ 52} $ .

Figure 2-2-29 Breakdown of posting (by day and time)

(Breakdown based on the day of the week)	(Unit: cases)
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
68	69	65	72	90	125	139	628
11%	11%	10%	12%	14%	20%	22%	100%

(Breakdown according to time)	(Unit: cases)
0-3	3-6	6-9	9-12	12-15	15-18	18-21	21-0	Total
34	74	118	111	94	79	90	28	628
5%	12%	19%	18%	15%	13%	14%	4%	100%

In a questionnaire survey conducted of people that participated in the demonstration experiment, 95% replied that, “It is a convenient system,” and 69% replied that, “It changed my level of awareness when I look at the city.” ‘Chibarepo’ has been rated very highly by citizens.

Chiba City is scheduled to launch ‘Chiba Repo’ as a full-scale operation in September 2014, and aims to have 5,000 users within two to three years.
Organizational System for Resident Participation ~Gifu Social Infrastructure Maintenance Supporters Project~

‘Chibarepo’ is an effort to have residents contribute to early detection of deects in the infrastructure. Taking that one step further, there are now initiatives being put forward where residents can be responsible for doing some easy maintenance and inspections on infrastructures that they use everyday (like roads and bridges).

In Gifu, thanks to the citizens' participation in volunteer work, the 'Social Infrastructure Maintenance Supporters (hereinafter referred to as 'MS') project was launched in FY2009, a system where the region watches over the regional roads.

The people working as a part of MS are residents recruited through the public advertisement. The volunteers go through a training program in which they acquire the knowledge needed for inspecting road facilities, and receive a commission from the head of the civil engineering office. Since April 2014 to present, over 894 residents have been commissioned (Figure 2-2-31). Even minors can participate in this project with a guardian’s consent. Currently the age range of commissioned volunteers is people in their 20’s to 80’s, which shows that a wide demographic is participating in the inspection of road facilities (Figure 2-2-32).

Source) Developed by MLIT from information material of Gifu Prefecture

Examples of Measures Taken in Response to the Information Provided by the MS (Repair of Potholes in the Road)

Source) Gifu Prefecture

Looking at the inspection result information by type, a lot of the reports received are regarding damage to a facility or deterioration in the pavement. The prefecture bases its repair work response on these inspection results.
‘Strategy for Increasing Usage,’ they reassessed the service to make it easier to use by doing things like re-thinking bus routes, and changing to services to every weekday rather than every other day. The changes extended to making it an all-year operation that included weekend services, and there was even demand for an extension in morning and afternoon service hours. The full-scale operation launched in FY2004.

With the launch of full-scale operations, the city conducted not only questionnaire-style surveys, but also conducted interview surveys with the public transportation users, as well as group interviews with residents. As a result of gaining a good understanding of the potential demand, despite having to run unprofitable bus routes due to the withdrawal of the private bus line, the number of public bus users continued to increase, and by October 2013, the total number of people riding the bus reached 1.5 million (Figure 2-2-40).

As part of bus user promotion efforts, the city has held a variety of events for revitalization of the shopping district and city center areas that require the use of public bus lines,

has set up a bus waiting community plaza within the shopping district, and held school outing activities for local elementary schools. Also, city officials speaking on the local cable television channel have done PR broadcasting to raise awareness regarding the public bus lines, in addition to promoting the revitalization of the local community.

Moreover, the city established the ‘Bus Supporters System $ ^{Note\ 62} $ , started activities promoting ‘Proactive Usage’ and ‘Public Bus PR in Familiar Places,’ and made benches for bus stops. In addition, to foster awareness that, ‘the public bus thrives and grows by regional residents’ efforts,’ the city has set up a cooperation system for the residents of the region, to create opportunities for the residents to participate in developing the environment.

Figure 2-2-41

Construction of a Bus Stop by Bus Supporters

Source) Uozu City

In FY2011, the city developed and implemented a bus location system, created through a joint development project with Hokuriku Polytechnic College, to further improve the convenience of the bus lines. For public bus users that do not have access to a PC or use a cell phone, the city has started a service where people can call the number posted at bus stops to reach the municipal office or tourist information center to ask for current bus location information.

With the goal to create a public transportation system that, ‘makes more people want to use it,’ ‘is so safe and comfortable that people want to ride it more,’ ‘contributes to revitalizing the region,’ and ‘can be continued for longer,’
Figure 2-3-1

Opinions Regarding Social Infrastructures and the Responsibilities For Future Generations

(Note) Question: What do you think the future generation should do with regards to the social capital development? “Development” includes new constructions, renewal, maintenance and management of the existing social capitals. Source) Nomura Research Institute (NRI) “Public Awareness Survey on the impact of dwindling population on the social infrastructures, 2008”

However, opinions regarding upgrades for social infrastructure is affected by how the current condition of social infrastructure is understood. If we look at the trends in results by how the person answered the question regarding their understanding of the current condition of social infrastructure, the more the concerned the person felt about the condition of social infrastructures, the more they thought it necessary to upgrade all social infrastructures, while those who were more optimistic about the condition of social infrastructures tended to not find it necessary to upgrade social infrastructures (Figure 2-3-3). From these results, we can see that, though more people think that it would be difficult to upgrade all social infrastructures, people who are very aware of problems that can result from aging social infrastructures understand the necessity for upgrading social infrastructures.

## Attitudes Concerning Renewal of Infrastructure and the Associated Cost

“In order to renew all the deteriorated social infrastructures, it may be expected that the financial burden for the citizens would increase. Regarding this financial burden, please select the best answer that best approximates your opinion.”

Source) MLIT "Public Awareness Survey"

Figure 2-3-3

The Level of Anxiety Felt about the Current Condition of Social Infrastructures, and Inclination Towards the Upgrading of Social Infrastructures, Bearing in Mind the Future Strain

Even if the cost increased, the upgrading of all the facilities should be swiftly executed.

The upgrading should be done gradually, starting from the facilities with the highest priority after considering the importance of each facility, and eventually upgrading all the facilities.

If the cost is going to increase, then not all the facilities need to be upgraded.

Other

I do not know.

(Note) Cross tabulation of the answers to “At present, do you feel anxious about any of the social infrastructures that you use?” and to “In order to upgrade the deteriorated social infrastructures, it may be expected that the financial burden for the citizens would increase. Regarding this financial burden, please select the best answer that best approximates your opinion.”

Source) MLIT "Public Awareness Survey"