About two years after the country’s digital minister publicly declared a “war on floppy disks,” Japan reportedly banned the use of floppy disks in government systems as of June 28.
According to a Reuters report on Wednesday, the Japanese government “eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems.” The report notes that as of mid-June, Japan’s Digital Agency (a body created during the COVID-19 pandemic and aimed at updating the government’s technology) had “repealed all 1,034 regulations governing their use, except for an environmental restriction related to vehicle recycling.” This suggests that there is even a government use that could be returned to the diskette, although more details were not available.
Digital Minister Taro Kono, the politician behind the Japanese government’s technology modernization, has made his distaste for floppy disks and other old office technology like fax machines quite public. Kono, who is said to be considering a second presidential run, told Reuters in a statement today:
We’ve won the floppy disk war on June 28th!
Although Kono announced plans to eliminate floppy disks from the government just two years ago, it’s been 20 years since floppy disks were in their heyday and 53 years since they debuted. In January 2024 alone, the Japanese government stopped requiring physical media, such as discs and CD-ROMs, for 1,900 types of government filings, such as business filings and citizen submission forms.
The timeline may be surprising, considering that the last company to make disks, Sony, stopped doing so in 2011. As a storage medium, of course, floppy disks can’t compete with today’s options since most floppy disks max out at 1 .44 MB (2.88 MB Floppies were also available). And you’d be hard-pressed to find a modern system that can still read discs. There are also underlying concerns about the old storage format, with Tokyo police reportedly losing a pair of discs containing information on dozens of applicants for public housing in 2021.
But Japan isn’t the only government body with surprisingly recent ties to technology. For example, San Francisco’s Muni Metro light rail uses a train control system that uses software that ditches floppy disks and plans to continue doing so until 2030. The US Air Force used 8-inch floppy disks until 2019.
Outside of the public sector, floppy disks remain common in numerous industries, including embroidery, airline cargo, and CNC machines. We reported on Chuck E. Cheese using discs for his animatronics until January 2023.
Resistance to modernization
Now that the Japanese government considers its support for the drives to be over, eyes are on it to see what, if any, other modernization upgrades it will make.
Despite various technological achievements, the country has a reputation for retaining old technology. The Institute for Management Development’s (IMD) World Digital Competitiveness Ranking for 2023 ranked Japan as number 32 out of 64 economies. The IMD says its ranking measures “the capacity and readiness of 64 economies to adopt and explore digital technologies as a key driver for economic transformation in business, government and wider society”.
It may be a while before the government is ready to give up some old technologies. For example, government officials have reportedly resisted the move to the cloud for administrative systems. Kono asked government offices to drop the request lady personal stamps in 2020, but according to The Japan Times, the move away from stamps is happening at a “glacial pace”.
Many workplaces in Japan also opt for fax machines over email, and plans in 2021 to remove fax machines from government offices have been shelved due to resistance.
Some believe that Japan’s reliance on older technology stems from the convenience and efficiency associated with analog technology, as well as government bureaucracy.