DX and the Digital Agency

■DX and the Digital Agency

When I first heard that the government was creating the Digital Agency, I felt it was 25 years too late for digital technology, but with the explosive power of implemented in one year by passing laws and budgeting and gathering people from the private section, I had hopes that this might work.

I am an advocate for creating a Ministry of Culture to act as a lowest common denominator for handling communications, broadcasting, computers, and intellectual property in an integrated manner, with digital as its core.

In that case, the first thing is to produce small but easily understood results through administrative DX.

By linking systems to My Number, we can quickly produce output that lets the public experience the benefits of digital.

I received a request from Takuya Hirai, the first Minister for Digital Transformation, to turn Smart City Takeshiba in Tokyo, which I am overseeing, into a branch of the Digital Agency and use it as a base for collaboration between the public and private sectors.

iU and the Digital Agency are collaborating to create a curriculum to develop regional DX talent.

We should have the private sector do more and more of the portions where they can help in that manner.

The X in DX means transfer, a transition period.

The goal is for everything to become digital, and if the government digitizes everything, the Digital Agency will no longer be needed.

The goal is for the Digital Agency to disappear.

I want it to go away in about five years.

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Why did Japan not go through DX

 ■Why did Japan not go through DX

Japan is the only one in the G7 with a negative excess mortality rate during the coronavirus pandemic. We became healthy due to coronavirus.

By simply “requesting” that people show restraint, there were even no riots. Overseas, they were littered with protests. We did well.

However, what this revealed was Japan’s digital defeat.

National procedures that can be done online make up 8%. Online teaching is 5%.

The e-commerce rate is 18% worldwide and 8% in Japan.

The delay of DX is directly connected to shrinkage in Japan overall.

Our IMD 1989 IMD World Competitiveness Ranking, which was 1st place in the world in 1989, has fallen to 34th place.

Among major countries, Japan is the only one that has undergone a unilateral decline.

Why did we not go through DX?

There have been many efforts, such as e-Japan. But they didn’t work.

Just why?

If we do not think that through, we will miss again.

For some time, Japan’s weaknesses in IT utilization have been thought to lie in the public for medical care/education/government, and management.

Doctors, teachers, government officials, and company presidents were the bottlenecks.

Medical care/education/government and management were the winners in the 70s to 80s.

Japan’s world-leading medical care and world-renowned Japanese management.

That success refused to be changed wholesale into digital.

Not converting what was successful was a rational action.

However, leadership and that generation could not understand that digital is a complete change, not a partial change.

Conversely, there are some genres that have already transformed industry-wide due to DX.

For example, content.

The music industry was hit by a digital wave 20 years ago, shifting from selling records to a business of listening online and making money with concerts and merchandise.

Content distribution is now 2.5 times more popular online than for than packaged content.

This industry transformed from wondering how to use digital to being an entirely digital business.

They are now shifting to data business driven by data and business that incorporates AI.

This will spread to all industries.

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