Japan finally says goodbye to floppy

Nobody, really nobody, uses floppy disks anymore. Except for the Japanese government… Japan is addicted to the floppy.

After thirty years, the time has finally come, the Japanese government is going to get rid of the floppy disk. You read that right, GOING to get off the floppy. For the younger Apparata reader, a floppy is say a USB stick on which you can store 1.44 MB. Say half an MP3…

The Japanese minister of digital affairs Taro Kono announces via Twitter that as far as he is concerned, the floppy can be thrown in the trash. He declares war on the floppy.

Digital Minister declares a war on floppy discs.
There are about 1900 government procedures that requires business community to use discs, ie floppy disc, CD, MD, etc to submit applications and other forms. Digital Agency is to change those regulations so you can use online.

— KONO Taro (@konotaromp) August 31, 2022

In itself you would say, no problem, then you just stop? Where do they buy things anyway and in which computer can you still use them. But it doesn’t seem that simple in the land of the rising sun.

Over 1,900 prescriptions

According to the minister, who is in charge of it himself, about 1,900 regulations lay down by law that government documents must be stored on diskettes. These old procedures make the Japanese government very difficult to access for the citizens. After all, how do you get to the floppies?

It must be the wet dream of the Dutch ministerial team. Floppy disks are very easy to lose and with a WOB request you can always say that the diskettes have been accidentally formatted by an official. Mark Rutte must archive his SMS in real time, otherwise it will not fit on the 1.44 MB of the floppy.

Minister Kono does have a remorse of conscience and wants to be accessible to journalists and citizens from his own country, so he wants the government to use the cloud to archive files and make them accessible.

We’re faxing!

Incidentally, the floppy is not the only nineties relic that the Japanese government likes to keep in the air. According to the BBC, the fax is still a very important means of communication for the Japanese government. A project to ban the fax to the archive has been going on for a while, but not very successfully.

It is remarkable that a country that is so part of the technical progress in the world is so far behind in this area.