I went ahead and made some remarks about the postal system.

 ■I went ahead and made some remarks about the postal system.

"Colloquium on the state of postal services in the digital age."

A meeting hosted by the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications was held where the government, which is treating digitization as its most important issue, made certain proposals to the Japan Post Group.

Professor Emeritus Kazuteru Tagaya of Chiba University served as chair, and I served as deputy chair.

I was asked to share my opinions at the beginning, so I did.

Here's a self introduction.

I joined the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in 1984, and my first training site was the Setagaya Post Office.

Thirty years ago, I was the Noboribetsu post office manager.

I was dispatched to Paris for 2 years and was involved in foreign investment in savings insurance.

I was in charge of restructuring ministries at the Minister's Secretariat.

I was involved in the postal service at three locations: on-site, overseas, and at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but that is over 20 years ago, now.

Since that time, I have been out of the postal sector.

I was intrigued when Kazuhide Kinugawa, president of Japan Post, recently said, "We will improve the channels of communication between people on the ground and management."

The postal service I am acquainted with was already a flexible organization with open lines of communication, but it seems to have become more constrained after undergoing privatization.

While efficiency improvements and governance are being emphasized under the trend of privatization, I am concerned about how far the postal service's role as infrastructure will be able to be maintained.

How to utilize the functionality of the postal service to cope with aging, informatization, and internationalization is an issue of national importance.

The assets of the postal service are tripartite: people, things, and its network. How to maximize that value?

The sense of security and trust that people in post offices have cannot be imitated by other companies.

They are involved in local government operations, monitoring services, and more, but they could feasibly handle other regional public services in a more strategic fashion. To that end, institutional allowances will also be an issue.

Physical objects and real estate can still be utilized to some extent.

It could also be used for activities aimed at the elderly or the like, but personally I hope it will be used as an educational base.

People have also expressed interest in support projects for the Olympics, e-sports, etc.

Next is a network infrastructure.

Postal mail is a form of communication and is not inherently in conflict with IT.

Since it operates a large commercial communication network, it would not be unusual if it becomes a telecommunications carrier or enters the ICT business.

It would have been no surprise if the post office took Rakuten's position, therefore.

Finance is also inherently a data business. Post offices handle large amounts of data through three businesses, and they have 24,000 bureaus where they could embed sensors to whatever extent they want to track the flow of people and goods. They are in an advantageous position.

In order to promote these approaches, human resources well-versed in data and design will be indispensable, but actually securing human resources to adapt to these innovations will be a challenge.

It is natural, or rather a defensive strategy, to make use of those assets: people, things, and networks.

But I hope they will also go on the offensive.

International expansion is a major issue for every industry as the domestic economy stagnates. What will the postal service do? The postal service is, in particular, a universal system.

I also look forward to seeing what technology initiatives they come up with.

I do not have data on how much Japan Post allocates to R&D, but communication and finance companies have to be driven by research if they wish to grow in the future.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. Postal Service invested 500 million JPY in the MIT Media Lab. Domestic competitors are also moving fast.

Meanwhile, Japan Post can be seen making inroads around the cloud, AI, robots, and the like, and they are also showing signs of supporting open innovation with partner companies, so we should support them.

This is no longer in the pilot stages, and both are ripe for implementation and actual use, so I'd like to see them speed things up.

Here are two details on my own recent activities.

I am promoting smart city development in the national strategic special zone in Takeshiba, Minato, Tokyo.

We are proceeding with a 5G/8K/AI data utilization project in collaboration with SoftBank, NTT, KDDI, broadcasters, and the University of Tokyo, RIKEN, NICT, and other players.

Also, this April, we opened an ICT business university called iU in Sumida Ward in cooperation with 250 companies in the communication and ICT space, among others.

This is a university where all students start businesses, and we are putting efforts into regional revitalization in cooperation with entities like Yoshimoto Kogyo.

I think both have a high affinity with the postal service, but they haven't been linked up yet.

This is but one example. Since there are projects like this all over the country, it would be nice to see meetings like this one lead to further developments around matching with the postal service.

As mentioned above, while the post office may be downtrodden due to scandals involving Japan Post Insurance and postal savings, a general slump in postal services, and overseas investment failures, a digital opportunity is coming, so I tried to set a fire under them to stay positive.

There are projects I'm involved in that they would do well to get involved in, but I haven't seen them rise to the challenge yet.

So it's my role to rouse them into doing so.