The focus will be on benefiting the whole population, including the elderly and the disabled. Government officials said Japan will present the policy outline to the Group of Seven major industrialized nations' ministerial meeting on telecommunications policy, scheduled to be held Saturday and Sunday in Brussels. Under the fundamental policy outline, the government aims to improve information networks, particularly in the fields of administration, education, research, medical and welfare services, transportation and disaster prevention. It says Japan will seek to alleviate its vulnerability to natural disasters such as earthquakes by building a satellite-based telecommunications system. Authorities will be able to use the system to gather information on damaged suffered during disasters.
Japan lags behind the United States in computer networking.
The outline states that the government will also take measures to cope with issues that arise from the advancing of an information society, such as protection of intellectual property rights and privacy, and improving backup systems in case of disasters. The outline asks government ministries and agencies to sketch out more concrete plans by the end of the year. The G-7 ministerial meeting on telecommunications policy, dubbed the global information infrastructure summit, is to be attended by trade and telecommunications ministers from Japan, the U.S., Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and the European Union. They are expected to agree on eight principles to create a global advanced information-oriented society. The eight principles include promoting competition and private investment, constructing an appropriate framework of regulations, realizing free access to networks and contributing to improving network systems in developing countries, the officials said.