── The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has created a guide for using generative AI for local governments and called for the appointment of a Chief AI Officer (CAIO) to promote and manage its use. However, government offices are the least IT-adapted organizations in Japan, and policies such as the area manager system, which aims to address the IT talent shortage, alone don't seem to be a fundamental solution. Is it possible to change the "digital aversion" of civil servants?
Toshinao Sasaki (hereinafter referred to as Sasaki): First, looking at the current situation in Japan, an international comparative survey conducted regularly by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for its Information and Communications White Paper found that Japan's adoption rate in areas such as digital transformation and AI is extremely low compared to other countries, and there is a marked tendency for people to be reluctant to adopt them.
Since the deflationary period in the late 1990s, people's attitudes have become more negative, and the value system surrounding new technologies has shifted from "it looks interesting, so let's try it" to "I want to avoid it because I'm worried." Japanese people also tend to view technology as an extension of "stationery that helps with manual work." In other words, while some people love Excel and are even called "Excel experts," they are not fully adept at using it as a tool for sharing and structuring data. For these reasons, I believe the adoption of digital transformation and AI has been slow to progress in Japan.
Local governments have high hopes for the use of AI to reduce costs and secure financial resources, but it has long been pointed out that there is an overwhelming shortage of personnel capable of digital transformation, especially at the city and town level. When it comes to AI, I believe the difficulty of introducing and utilizing it has risen dramatically.
In the 2000s, "ITization" meant "replacing only the tools with digital" without changing business processes, such as switching documents exchanged by fax to email or converting paper documents to Word files. However, the advances in "DX" in the 2010s focused on not simply replacing existing processes, but instead adapting business processes to technology.
