Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Working Group Legal Affairs digitalization Study Team (First)

Overview

Date and time: Thursday, February 17, 2022 (2022) from 16:00 to 17:00
Location: Online
Agenda:
1. Opening
2. Proceedings
  1. Explanation from the Secretariat
  2. Exchange of opinions
3. Adjournment

Materials

Related Information

The first meeting of the Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Study Team of the digitalization Working Group Legal Affairs Office was held.

Minutes

: Well, it's time to get started. Today, thank you very much for participating in the Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Review Team for Legal Affairs established in the first digitalization Working Group.
My name is Hitoshi Digital Agency, and I will be the moderator.
Today, each member is participating online as if they were digital. Thank you very much.
First of all, I would like to ask Senior Vice-Minister for Digital Affairs Kobayashi, who is also the chair of the Study Team, to give us an address before the Study Team is held, including the purpose of the meeting.

Senior Vice-Minister Kobayashi: Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for your cooperation with the review team. And hello, everyone from the secretariat.
Today, members of the Working Group of the Ad Hoc Liaison Office are also participating as observers. First of all, I would like to share the mission of this team. Originally, Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee was a country where the social systems themselves were not suitable for digital technology, and what is blocking the implementation of technology is rather the social systems themselves, so this is an initiative to review them as a whole.
In order to implement this initiative, I believe that it is necessary to take a very large-scale initiative, since it includes all areas, ministries and agencies, and even the customs of local government and private sector. In order to implement this initiative, I believe it is very important that not only politics and the administration, but also each of them takes action voluntarily and simultaneously.
In that sense, we will continue to revise laws in the Ad Hoc Liaison Office. New laws are always changing with the times, so they must be updated continuously, and when new laws come out, I think it is necessary to check their suitability. To that end, one thing is that we must create a mechanism to ensure that new laws conform to digital principles, as is called Digital Legislation Bureau.
The other point is that when it comes to who is going to check things that are changing rapidly, of course the administrative officer is creating the law, so it is natural for the administrative officer to check them, but since it is the people who actually use the law to live their lives, I would like to make it possible for the people to see them and to come and fix them if they feel uncomfortable.
It may be contradictory to some extent, but I believe that it is digitalization's responsibility to democratize the law, which is the foundation of democracy, and to make it easier for the people to understand the law itself, which has become a user interface and experience that is extremely difficult to understand today.
If we do this, I believe that it will be possible for companies and the people to take an approach that they can read themselves and then make some changes. I believe that this will create a culture in which the country as a whole voluntarily and autonomously reviews its rules, and will create a fair and diverse society in which individuals and companies can play an active role in social systems that are always up to date.
In order to do this, first of all, we need to thoroughly develop the base registry of law, make it easier for the public and private sectors to access, digitalization the legal affairs themselves, and thoroughly implement BPR, and review the division of roles between the public and private sectors. In particular, if the national government develops the base registry, if everyone at Legal Tech can provide services that are easy for each industry to understand and that are easy for each field to understand, I think that the public and private sectors will be able to provide services that take advantage of their characteristics. If this happens, I think that a new growth industry will be born in this Legal Tech part, and Legal Tech will provide legal services to each industry in an easy to understand manner. For domestic business operators as well as business operators from overseas, if Japan's rules are made easier to understand, investment decisions will be made faster, and new investments will be accepted. I believe that this is a reform that will undoubtedly lead to the great growth of this country.
Therefore, we will thoroughly review regulation. And in regulation, I believe that new ways of creating rules will realize growth, so I would like to advance this initiative with you. Thank you for your cooperation.

: Thank you very much.
Next, since this is the first session, I will give you plenty of time to express your opinions freely. First of all, I would like to have a few self-introductions from each member.
First of all, can I ask you to start with the Yasuno members?

Yasuno Member : Nice to meet you. I'm Takahiro Yasuno. Nice to meet you.
I am currently co-founder and Director of a legal tech startup called MNTSQ Co., Ltd. My career is in machine learning and natural language processing, and I am actually in charge of product development at the legal tech site, so I would like to give advice from such a position. Personally, as Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Kobayashi said earlier, I deeply sympathize with the idea of democratizing legal development, opening up, and creating a single source of reliable information, so I would like to do so. Thank you very much.

: Thank you.
Next, Mr. Tsunoda, please.

TSUNODA Member : Nice to meet you. I'm Tsunoda. Nice to meet you.
I belong to the Faculty of International Information at Chuo University, which studies law and information from an international perspective. I myself have been conducting research in the field of legal AI for a long time, since the 1980s, on how to handle law with AI and IT. It can be said that I have been working on this with the same awareness as Mr. Digital Agency. In fact, as part of such activities, I have been engaged in activities such as collecting and organizing most of the regulation in local government throughout Japan, creating a database, and providing it on the web for free, and creating a system that automatically creates a model of a regulation proposal. The system has been provided for free since this April.
In addition to these activities, we have also made recommendations on the problems faced by legal AI and what to be careful about in magazines for legal professionals such as "Law Times" and "NBL". We have also conducted research on the method of creating laws itself, and have also advanced research on various levels of legal data creation, or "law Engineering", which is an engineering method of creation methodology of how to create laws. Therefore, from such a perspective, we would like to give advice on what is possible in digitalization of legal affairs, or on the contrary, what is considered to be technologically premature, and we would be grateful if we could be of any help in actually promoting a soft landing.
Also, when I heard the Senior Vice-Minister's talk earlier, I also felt that there is a similar idea at the root. One of the mathematical theorems I learned in the control engineering class in the Department of Systems Science, where I majored in a long time ago, was that observability equals controllability. Observability is what can be observed, and what can be seen is the same as what can be controlled, that is, what can be controlled. Strictly speaking, it is limited to a typical type of system, and the theorem says that it is not equal and that the two are two sides of the same coin, but it was proven about half a century ago. Therefore, even from such a perspective, even when considering democracy, in order to control politics by the people, I believe that it is most important to be seen by the people. I was very impressed by the words from the Senior Vice-Minister about the importance of being seen in this way. Thank you very much. I would like to cooperate with you with the aim of visualization.
That's all.

: Thank you very much.
Next, may I speak to Mr. Fujiwara?

FUJIWARA Member : My name is Soichiro FUJIWARA, I am an attorney at Nagashima, Ohno and Tsunematsu Law Office.
My main business is as an attorney, and I am involved in M & amp; A and technology-related projects. In relation to today's meeting, I am in charge of legal tech in my office. In addition, I have a capital and business alliance with MNTSQ, where Mr. Yasuno is, and I am also an external director of MNTSQ. What does it mean? I am a user of legal tech and a director of the sales side, and I am looking at DX from various perspectives, and I think I can talk about it from various angles.
In addition, I am also helping with the secretariat of the Digital Rincho, and I believe that the creation of a base registry in law in particular is one of the most important parts of the overall reform, as it is at the bottom of the real base layer. I really hope that we can do something good. Thank you.

: Thank you very much.
Member Horiguchi, please go ahead.

Horiguchi Member : I'm Horiguchi, Managing Director of FRAIM Co., Ltd. I'm pleased to meet you today.
As the representative of FRAIM Co., Ltd., I am engaged in the development and provision of a document creation system that allows you to edit documents online in the cloud from anywhere, and the natural language processing associated with it, although this may be an unfamiliar field.
In addition, our efforts and my own efforts are characterized by the fact that last year, the people of government agency, Mr. Suga, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), where Mr. Suga is located, used demonstration experiments, etc., and I studied it. As a technology company, we are continuously considering and working on what we can do in digital administration. In this initiative, I am aware that among your concerns is the consideration of law inspection in visual inspection, so is there any place where we can offer wisdom from our perspective in this regard? In addition, I believe that there are many points that we would like to study, so please let me know.

: Thank you.
Member Yagita, please go ahead.

Yagita Member : Thank you very much. My name is Yagita from Legalscape. Nice to meet you.
Legalscape, which is the origin of the name, is a combination of the terms "legal" and "scape." I believe that what we want to do and what we are doing is to collect and organize legal information that is scattered, originally located in one place and should be understood in relation to each other, but is fragmented, and to make it possible to look over it at a glance, we decided to name the company Legalscape. This is what we call digitalization Consideration of Legal Affairs.
Currently, Legalscape provides so-called research tools, which enable law firms and corporate legal departments to conduct legal research. Among them, for example, if you are reading a law book, you can see that the law is referenced in the book, and the link structure is all analyzed, and you can jump to the link or perform reverse lookup. These are provided as functions. Therefore, when I talk about digitalization in legal affairs this time, when we create something like base registry, we create something similar in Legalscape, so I think we can provide a little bit of our knowledge. Thank you very much.

: That's reassuring. Thank you very much.
Mr. Yoneda, please go ahead.

YONEDA Member : My name is Yoneda from Kagoshima University. Nice to meet you.
My main research focus is on organization in corporate legal affairs. In March, the Survey of Corporate Legal Affairs will be published by Shoji Homu, and I am also editing it. Among them, this survey was conducted in 2020, and some of the questions include how ICT is used and interest in legal tech. Since this is the largest survey on corporate legal affairs, I would like to convey a wide range of user perspectives.
Also, I myself worked at the Law School, and when the Law School was established, its legal information, Japanese law database, including case law and law, was digitized at once, and it spread to ordinary companies. My experience of such things and my work in legal sociology, which I have analyzed or described from that point of view, may be useful. In addition, the regulation database created by Professor Tsunoda was sent from Kagoshima University, and it is a system that supports the user side who uses the regulation database and the creation of the examples attached to it. I have also accumulated the sense of actually using it, and I think such knowledge will be useful here.
In particular, there are currently 1,790 local government, and we are aware of about 95% of them, but I am painfully aware of how difficult it is to update them in real time. There was news yesterday that the rules were not promulgated and became invalid until they were created and promulgated in each local government, and I believe that we can make a statement based on the situation on the ground.
As a specialist in the field of legal sociology, rules grow naturally on the ground, and it is quite difficult to control them. Therefore, it will be a kind of work that really challenges the ocean and steps into the ocean, so I would like to make a statement with such a stance that I will not be discouraged, and that I will do what I can be strongly confident about how much I can achieve in a planned manner, and that I will continue to talk about what I cannot do as a dream.
This time, I think that the current trend of the boom is a little too much, or more of a dream, so I would like to have a down-to-earth discussion on how much to do it. Thank you very much.

: That's very reassuring. Thank you very much.
Last but not least, Mr. Watanabe, please.

Watanabe, Member : Hello, my name is Yuichiro Watanabe. I am an attorney, but I am a so-called organization attorney working in a company, which is a little different from Mr. Fujiwara. Therefore, I would like to give my wisdom on how to create a database of this law from the user's point of view while considering business and investment with management in organization.
In addition, in my personal experience, in 2018, when Airbnb, to which I am currently affiliated, wanted to update the Japanese laws of the 1940s, the first wall I encountered was what kind of law and what kind of information there was. Therefore, as State Minister Kobayashi said, in order to create new laws and rules that suit the new era, I think it is a big first step, although it is difficult to see, to clarify the single source of truth, where to go to find the law, and whether there are rules.
In fact, Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, said a very interesting thing in his book. He said,' Now, the evolution of companies has far outpaced the changes in laws.' In this world, I think it is very significant to make the laws that will be our base digitally. So, I will do my best to make a solid contribution. I look forward to your continued guidance.

: Thank you.
There is a sense of anticipation. Thank you all for introducing yourself.
Now, I would like to move on to today's agenda. First of all, Mr. Yagyu, Director of Planning, would like to explain the details of the establishment of the Study Team in accordance with Materials 1 to 4. Mr. Yagyu, please.

Mr. Yagyu (Director of Planning, : My name is Yagyu, and I am a planning officer. Nice to meet you.
Then, I would like to explain the materials right away.
With regard to Document 1, the documents from the Working Group meeting under Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee held last Thursday, February 10, were the very documents that stipulated the establishment of the Study Team. In the first place, under the Working Group, the Study Team will be established to consider the establishment of a process and system to confirm the conformity of the new law with the Digital Principles.
Second, the members of the Study Team are as follows. As I introduced earlier, the Chairman is Senior Vice-Minister for Digital. The members are appointed by the Chairman from among you who have excellent insight into digital reform, regulatory reform, administrative reform, and legal affairs.
My third question is about the general affairs and administration of the study team, which I would like to have handled by Digital Agency with the cooperation of the Cabinet Secretariat and the Cabinet Office.
4. Other detailed matters related to the operation will be determined by the Chairman.
Next, Material 2 is about the members of the Study Team. The chairman is the Senior Vice-Minister. As for the members, Mr. Yasuno, Mr. Tsunoda, Mr. Fujiwara, Mr. Horiguchi, Mr. Yagita, Mr. Yoneda, and Mr. Watanabe have introduced themselves earlier, so I will omit the details.
Next, I would like to move on to Material 3. It is a material on the operating guidelines of this review team.
First, I would like to make public, in principle, the materials distributed at the meeting of the Study Team.
2. In principle, I would like to make the minutes of the study team public.
Next, I would like to move on to 3. Having said that, in principle, we are considering making the minutes public or open to the public. However, after the decision of the Review Team, in certain specific cases, some or all of the minutes may be kept undisclosed.
In such cases, if it is deemed that there is a risk of unduly impairing the frank exchange of opinions and the neutrality of decision-making, if it is deemed that there is a risk of unduly causing confusion among the people, or if it is deemed that there are reasonable grounds for causing significant hindrance to neutral deliberations, we would like to allow the non-disclosure of materials and minutes, etc., after the decision of the team.
In addition to what is provided for in 1, 2, and 3 above, we would like to have the Chairman decide what is necessary for the operation.
Next, I would like to refer to Material 4. This is a draft of the matters to be considered by the Study Team. This is also a material presented at the first Working Group meeting. As the Senior Vice-Minister briefly explained earlier, first of all, I would like to ask you to consider the process and system for confirming the compatibility of new law with the digital principles. In this regard, in addition to the review of the existing law that is being conducted now, we must firmly check the compatibility of new law that will be born every day with the digital principles. I would like to ask you to discuss what kind of process and system will be used.
My second question is about the ideal form of digitalization and BPR for legal affairs and public-private sharing. As shown in the three pages below, I believe that the compatibility of legal affairs and digital principles will be confirmed and that they will be the natural basis for that. As you have made various statements recently, I would like to ask you to discuss how to develop and provide base registry (digital original) of law Data, which is not clear at this moment.
My second question is about the division of roles between the public and private sectors for the utilization of law documents. I will write it like a law document, but various mechanisms and details of regulation are not necessarily written down in law. It is a reality that the actual contents are specified in various documents such as notifications, guidelines, and Q & amp; A. Therefore, I would like you to discuss how to actually make it open, and how to review it, whether it will be done only by the government, and how to create a mechanism that works well by dividing roles including the private sector.
My final question is about the use of legal tech in legal affairs. In regard to this, the legal work currently being carried out by the Government is, after all, analog and paper-based work and office work. In this context, legal tech and various digital technologies are being created, and we would like to incorporate various knowledge of legal tech into legal affairs, including the perspective of how to make efficiency of that work and whether it will enable more accurate and efficient amendments. Therefore, we would like to ask you to consider various knowledge and proposals, and I would like to list them as matters to be considered.
That's all for the brief explanation of the materials.

: Thank you very much.
Material 5 is supplementary, but I would like to add a little about the background of what Mr. Yagyu explained in Material 4 and the overall picture of what the Digital Policy Coordination is working on. At the end of the year, we will propose the "Digital Principles for Structural Reform" at the Digital Policy Coordination, and after the Cabinet decision, it will become the policy of the entire government.
I will omit the details of the principles, but what should be applied is so-called "law" in a narrow sense. Not only laws, government ordinances, and ministerial ordinances, but also notifications, office communications, and guidelines that the national government is not necessarily involved in the formulation of, are functioning as rules on the ground. If we are to thoroughly implement digitalization and DX as a whole, we have no choice but to take that into consideration.
This will be an enormous work, so I think we need to consider at the same time that the inspection work, which currently relies on manual work at the Digital Ad Hoc Liaison Office, will be systemized and processed a little more in the future. Therefore, I have included "digitalization of legal affairs" as an issue in the materials for the Digital Ad Hoc Liaison Office at the end of this year.
As for the issues that I hope will be resolved through the team's consideration, the first is how to further law, automate, and systemize the inspection of tens of thousands of existing efficiency (stock) currently conducted by the Digital Consultation Office, which is manually searching for keywords. In addition, I would like to confirm the compatibility of digital principles for new law and new flow incoming law, where, how, and who should be responsible in relation to the existing law examination process. In addition, what kind of process, system, and infrastructure will be necessary to realize a form in which law will be updated as needed in accordance with the evolution of technology, rather than ending with the inspection of existing logistics? I have very vivid awareness of these issues through extensive manual work and human wave tactics.
The second point is that law is not the only country that is responsible for inspection work that includes people other than law. When we want to conduct inspection work in cooperation with the help of various people, Issue's master data, which is what will be updated in the first place, is not always clear. As you have mentioned earlier, we are also aware of the problem that the base registry of law Data should be maintained and provided at the same time as it is promulgated, at least by the national government to a certain extent.
Third, as you pointed out earlier, the outer edge of the "rules" is actually not clear. It is extremely difficult to understand the whole picture of what functions as rules and discipline in society, so how can we organize and determine the scope of what the state should provide as public goods in digital form that is at least as accurate as this even if it has to bite its teeth? For other parts, how can we create an environment in which the people of the country as a whole can access freely and democratically by rules and discipline, in cooperation with private sector services and legal tech services?
The last page contains examples from other countries. Denmark has "Digital Legislation Bureau," which checks law based on digital principles, and we have made proposals using it as a reference. base registry in law is also conducting various preliminary demonstration experiments in the U.S. and Australia. I would like to have discussions on the format of law data. There is a range of machine-readable and machine-readable data, so I would like to have discussions on the format of data, the extent to which the government will do it, and the extent to which private sector will take over the data.
That's all.
Now, I would like to move on to Item 2 of the agenda. Based on the explanation so far, I would like to ask for any opinions or questions from each member.
Then, Mr. Fujiwara, please.

FUJIWARA Member : I am FUJIWARA.
First of all, I would like to ask you a question. I think it is better to collect information from overseas, including the Danish and Australian cases that were on the last slide. Of course, European languages and Japanese languages are technically completely different, so I think Japanese technologies, including those of people who are here right now, will be necessary. I think there should be some parts that can be used as a reference for the overall setup. For example, what on earth is the Secretariat of Digital ready Legislation in Denmark? In addition, I like the look of the Australian and British websites. How do they make them? All countries have been making differences in language just like Japanese revised texts. They may have been using them for a long time. They must have know-how on how to do this immediately. I feel it is better to listen to some information and collect information. Will Mr. Digital Agency contact you or ask someone outside to do this? What kind of information collection will it be?

: The Secretariat is currently considering a commissioned survey, and although I think it is difficult to do so in only a few countries, we would like to examine precedents. If you have an idea that we should focus on this, I would like to send it to you. I have heard in fragments that the United Kingdom also has a principle of data reuse, and that Germany is still revising its laws in a revised text, but I would like to examine examples from other countries if there are any, and I would like to provide information here.

TSUNODA Member : In terms of the current situation, I think it is most important to conduct surveys of foreign countries that can serve as an ideal or sample for To Be. I feel that surveys of the present situation are also important. I have started to conduct surveys myself, and I have already understood to some extent the situation in the local local government such as regulation, but I have deepened my belief that it is also important to understand the current situation, such as the As Is of the creation site at the level of various national notifications and circulars. In addition, I think that it may be easier for Mr. Digital Agency to collect such information. There are many fragmentary reports and articles on the current situation, but they are mostly about laws and ordinances, and I think that it is necessary to conduct a survey of the As Is of laws at the lower level.
Just yesterday, I had a meeting with people in charge of food additives at the National Institute of Health Sciences on the occasion of the As Is survey. This organization has prepared an enormous amount of official documents on additives that handle notifications, but in them, there are thousands of detailed instructions on how to handle and how to do various additives. It is a thick book. In addition, the department next to them handles substances related to cosmetics, and it seems that the way to summarize them is a little different. There are many types and amounts, and they are highly specialized, so it seems to be difficult to summarize the data format uniformly. Like this, even within the same government organization, there are quite a few differences and amounts, and the current situation is that there are characteristics in each field. It seemed to be daunting even if I did a little research myself. I think it will be a Issue how to collect information on methods and formats related to data compilation.
We may have to give our opinion, but I think it is not easy. If an investigation has already been conducted by Mr. Digital Agency, I would be grateful if you could tell us what the situation is like and what kind of summary you have.

: Thank you very much. I would like to organize the survey items because I would like to investigate them from now on. I would like you to take a look at them in advance. There may be various perspectives on the survey, such as how the lower law you pointed out is treated, whether all of them are handled by the government, what to do if the data is wrong, and who makes the English version. I would like to run the survey after receiving your input. Thank you very much.
Would anyone care for anything else?

YONEDA Member : If I were to amplify the interest in Mr. Tsunoda's statement, I would like to ask what kind of process the current law itself is going through to be published as a text. The process of whether the law itself will be further integrated after the publication and whether it will be posted on e-LAWS is actually a black box, isn't it? In the Okinawa itself, there are quite a few exchanges in the political process from the drafting of the proposal to the passage through the committee and the plenary session, and it may change at the last minute. In addition, when it is brought to the Printing Bureau, the manuscript that was brought is different, and various things happen, and it may take at least three days from the publication to the reflection on e-LAWS. I think we should pay attention to where the problem is.
In order to change the system, I think it is very important to recognize that there are still places where people must do this, and that there are places where mechanization can be done, to put in place a system that supports mechanization, and to look at the site with a firm perspective on where people must be involved.
As I said earlier, the necessary rules are created in accordance with the field, so it is absolutely impossible to do it from the beginning. If you do that, the field always becomes strange, and in my experience, the digital one is discarded in the end. In the end, people win. Therefore, in order to make it something that people properly like, I think we must carefully look at the process of the field. As I said now, the first thing is to look at how the scope of the law of the country is created.
I think the law is still in place. When it comes to government ordinances and ministerial ordinances, it becomes suspicious, and when it comes to notifications and circulars at a lower level, they are all different. I think it is probably not guaranteed whether or not they are managed. I think there are many forgotten notifications, so it is also the case with public notices. It is my estimation that there are many things that must be applied, but are not applied and are interpreted based on rules collected from the field. So, I think it is important to verbalize them as Mr. Tsunoda said, or to observe them and determine the form of what can be done.
The focus is on clarifying the process of how the law comes out. As far as I know, there are three Legislative Bureaus, and each of them is rewriting it. While sharing roles with manners. The way of using words is quite different there, and the manners are also different. So, in the end, where will people do and where will machines do? How can machines support what people make to be close to alternatives? I think it is important to focus on such things.

: Thank you very much. As a prerequisite for BPR, I think you pointed out that first of all, the existing process should be properly organized. I would like to respond to this.
Mr. Watanabe, please.

Watanabe, Member : Thank you very much. First of all, I think it was difficult for the Secretariat to make this material because they did various investigations. Thank you very much.
There are three points from my side. First of all, I personally think that it is important for the working group to discuss what it wants as an outcome. In other words, I am sorry if there is a misunderstanding, but my recognition is that e-LAWS is created in such a way that after it is promulgated, it is integrated into the work, although it is not a volunteer of each ministry and agency. Probably, what we want as an outcome is that when we, lawyers and corporate legal affairs, access e-LAWS, what is on it is the latest law, and if we copy and paste it, it will be reliable.
In fact, I have heard a lot of stories from people who were formerly involved in legal affairs up until now. For example, one of the interesting comments from administrative officials was that if I do not use e-LAWS, I am a little worried about whether it is accurate, so I am using Gyousei's Super law Web. I think the point that companies can conduct their activities with peace of mind is that the laws they are looking at are certain, and I think that is probably our outcome.
The second point is, as Mr. Suga said, there may be some people who think that once the digital consultation is completed and all the laws are reviewed this time, it will be over. I believe that the mission assigned to this working group is to update the laws over the next 10, 50, and 100 years as a national plan. Therefore, first of all, there may be some parts that cannot be done, but I felt that it is important to discuss how to create a framework for this.
Also, I am sorry to say this is a long time, but third, I believe that this is actually a secondary effect that is directly linked to the issue of how Kasumigaseki works. For example, one of the people I interviewed said that he worked 150 to 400 hours a month for four months for legal affairs, taking paper with him and returning home almost day and night. This may be an example, but I believe that by fulfilling this digitalization, there is also an effect that excellent bureaucrats can focus on the issues they should be working on. I believe that this is an extremely important work.
Thank you very much for your 3 comments.

: Thank you very much.
Next, Mr. Yasuno, how do you feel?

Yasuno Member : I would like to know your comments. As Mr. development said, if people don't like digital, they basically throw it away. I think that's exactly what you said. I would also like to know what people involved in legal affairs are particularly concerned about. I am not familiar with the area, so I would like to know about it in the future.
My other question is, as Mr. Watanabe said, I believe that the outcome assumption is extremely important, but I would also like to know about the rough schedule, and if there are any assumptions about the schedule and the output of the proceedings, I would like to ask you about them.

: Thank you very much. Actually, as the final outcome of the study team, we have committed to sorting out the points at issue and issuing a road map, so we do not have a draft at all right now, but we would like to discuss it with you and finally finish it. As you pointed out, we would like to do what we can realistically do first, but without forgetting the big vision. We would like to ask for your cooperation.
Well, how about others? How about you, Mr. Horiguchi or Mr. Yagita?

Yagita Member : Thank you very much. I'm Yagita. If I were to speak first, I would say that we have fairly agreed with what each of you have said so far. In particular, you said that you would sort out the points of discussion and issue a process chart as an output. I am sorry to ask you to dig a little deeper, but I would like to ask what kind of scope this process chart is. For example, as a process chart, I would like to ask more deeply about a process chart that goes quite deep, including the requirements for specific system development. What is your level of granularity and what are the outputs? Has anything been decided at this point?

: The more detailed the evidence, the more we would appreciate it. For example, at least up to this point, we would like to have e-LAWS work on it, or we would like to have it connected to such a system, and we would like to have a certain arrangement of how it will be completed and when it should be completed. I am not sure if we can discuss the specifications, but we would like to have you discuss the method and format of the data while borrowing your knowledge. The finer the granularity, the more we would appreciate it.

Yagita Member : I see. Thank you.

: Finally, Mr. Horiguchi, what do you think?

Horiguchi Member : I would like to make two comments.
The first point is that there are hurdles, as I believe, regarding the utilization of private service, which is one of the reasons for our participation in the government's relations and services in the legislative process. First of all, what kind of hurdles do you think there are? We, private business, are centered on the development of services as private sector's businesses and private businesses. Therefore, in terms of the subject of provision, it is not usually expected to be provided to the government and legislative bodies. If we can make good use of this, we will be able to contribute to the government's efforts, but it will not be able to reach business as it is. In addition, I recognize that the economic foundation for that may be insufficient in some cases.
We have been involved in this matter with a high level of interest in digitalization in recent years, and while we started initiatives with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry last year and with government agency this year, we have been working to launch products in the form of highly marketable products through many hearings, but I believe there is a high possibility that there will be some hurdles for highly public products, and I would like to hear your opinion on what the Government of Japan is thinking about this.
My second question is that I recognize that there are three principles of public-private cooperation, namely the Digital Principles. In the provision of public services, we will utilize the UI and UX of private sector companies. In addition, I am aware of whether there is an idea of base registry that the government will provide the correct legislation. In this regard, for example, I believe that law publishing companies, which we have been working with, have considerable experience in providing UI and UX to the private sector.
On the other hand, I believe that there is a mutually complementary relationship in which the efforts of e-LAWS and ministries and agencies ensure the consistency of data. I believe that there is much room for discussion on how this will be developed.
That's all.

: Thank you very much for your essential comments. Marketability is important, and of course the government would be very grateful if the contract could be read as a social contract, law, and legal tech could be used in all directions. However, it would cost a lot to change the specifications, so I think Mr. Yasuno is very familiar with how much is feasible under the premise that the government market is not so large, and I would like you to discuss whether it is really possible to do it at such a cost.
I would also like to thank you for your comments linked to Digital Principle 3. I would like to have a discussion on how much the government should do behind the scenes, and who should be able to provide it as a UI to the people and use it, as well as how the roles of the public and private sectors should be divided. Rather than asking the government to do everything, I expect that if the government does at least this much, we can do the rest.

FUJIWARA Member : I was just asking a question, so I raised my hand to express my opinion. First of all, in the compatibility of digital principles, as several professors have said, I think there is a division between what humans should do and what machines should do. In any case, unless the know-how that is being done by human power is inherited, we don't know what to do. The current members of the Secretariat are doing their best, and they have great know-how in their brains. If we leave this alone, everyone will be transferred, go somewhere, disappear, and be left alone. I will try not to let that happen.
In the end, it may take time and effort, but I think I have to do that. In particular, with the current technology, I think that making know-how open and searchable will be the most effective, so I think we need to start from there. In that sense, I would like to ask you to do that.
In addition, when we make the base registry this time, we say we will make it, but I think that the place where we will put the things we have done so far is completely different from the place where we will put the things we will do in the future. I feel that the place where we will put the things we have done so far will definitely require a lot of manual labor. In some cases, I am not sure if this is realistic, but it is an existing law database, and many of them will probably be unnecessary if we make a very good one this time. In extreme cases, I think that there may be an idea of buying the database or eliminating the need for manual labor. I think that it is good to consider various things including such points.
That's all.

also gave a big nod, and I would like to find a realistic solution for the shortest path, including that.
In conclusion, I would like to ask the Senior Vice-Minister for his concluding comments. Before that, I would like to ask if there are any comments by some of the members of the Working Group today. What do you think? Mr. Nemoto, Mr. Masushima, Mr. Ochiai, Mr. Inadani.

Mr. Yagyu (Director of Planning, , Director of Planning, Yagyu: This time, since the person in charge of e-LAWS is also working as an administrative staff in the review team, I would like to add a few words from Mr. Watanabe because he has the honor of e-LAWS.
Regarding the content of e-LAWS, I would like to explain the content in the second session. As you pointed out, the data in e-LAWS was insufficient until now, and it was actually impossible to use it in actual Legislative Bureau examinations. For better or worse, there were various errors in the bills during the ordinary Diet session in 2021. Therefore, the database of e-LAWS has been newly maintained to a level where it can be used in Legislative Bureau examinations. I would like to explain again the content of e-LAWS, including such efforts, next time.
In that sense, I would like to join the review team, including the person in charge of e-LAWS, to consider various matters, and I would like to receive various knowledge and deepen it, so I would like to ask for your cooperation.
I'm sorry for making such an excuse, but I would appreciate your understanding.

Watanabe, Member : Not at all. If I am not studying and I hurt your feelings, I have no other intention in particular, so I would like to ask for your understanding.

Mr. Yagyu (Director of Planning, ): No, I have come all the way with this very image, and in that sense, I have realized that we should have a solid database on law, and this time, for good or ill, it includes mistakes made by law. The wind of law working on digitalization is blowing now for this purpose, and if you can point out various things, including this very awareness of the problem, I would like to think of it as a kind of reprimand and work hard. Thank you very much.

: Thank you.
Mr. Tsunoda, I'm sorry to bother you, but I'd like to ask you to raise your hand. I asked Mr. Nemoto to show up earlier, so if you could say a few words, please do so first.

Member of the Working Group on Fundamental Issues : Although there is nothing in particular, I would like to say today that in addition to the talk on real space and physical space, how to talk about cyberspace is a major concern. Thank you very much.

: In the Working Group, Nemoto pointed out that it is important to widely provide the base registry of law to everyone without holding it within the Government.
Mr. Ochiai is also raising his hand, so Mr. Ochiai will be after Mr. Tsunoda, and there are already 4 minutes left, so we will close the deadline. Mr. Tsunoda, please.

TSUNODA Member : To make a long story short, when development e-LAWS, what was the basis of the project was exactly the Reform of Working Practices that Dr. Watanabe was referring to. If you think that it may not be very effective in the end, in this initiative, by setting and enumerating evaluation items in advance and setting checkpoints as KPIs, even if the results of the initiative do not reach the ideal form, I think it can be said that it has been effective to this extent. Otherwise, for example, as in the story of Reform of Working Practices earlier, even if there is an intention of Reform of Working Practices like e-LAWS, if the effect is not recognized by the general public, A will be in trouble. I thought that it would be good if you could raise something like a KPI so that people can understand that it is effective to this extent.
That's all.

: Thank you.
Then, Mr. Ochiai, please.

Ochiai Working Group Member : Thank you very much. I'm Ochiai, a member of the Working Group.
I think it is a study group related to the realization of digital principles, so I would like to tell you what I think is the viewpoint from that perspective. One is GtoBtoX, I think. The government will provide the functions and the interface will be in private sector, and we will try to do so as much as possible in fields other than legislation. I think it would be good if you could use this viewpoint.
Another point is that there is a part of the Principles that is, for example, unification of taxonomy, terminology, forms, etc. I believe that this is included in the Principles because it is necessary to consider the content of rewriting the Digital Legislation Bureau itself as necessary in order to make it easier to carry out the work being carried out in the law. I thought that the Working Group must make progress while looking at the content being carried out at the Review Meeting. I was listening to you because I wanted to have an opportunity to exchange progress with you.
That's all. Thank you very much.

: Thank you.
Mr. Yoneda, I thought your hand was up for a moment.

YONEDA Member : I think it would be enough if there were time constraints, but I would like to say a few words. As I speak now, I feel that the perspective of private sector is stopped at companies, and I am not limited to that. I would like you to lead us to a discussion that focuses on a wider range of people, each and every one of us.
That's all.

: This is an important perspective. Thank you very much.
Then, Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Kobayashi, I would appreciate it if you could give me your concluding comments.

Senior Vice-Minister : Thank you very much, everyone. It was a very essential discussion, and I think it was a very welcome meeting in which the efforts and expertise that each of us have made so far were demonstrated.
Most of all, I think what I am very grateful for is that all of you have in common the idea of doing things that can be socially implementation. That is our goal, so we are still running without showing the rough schedule or the granularity of what we will do, but I am truly grateful for your understanding of that and for your various comments.
I believe that the door has been opened for policies to tackle the problems that have been talked about for a long time, so I would like to realize them together with you from the perspective of how we can overcome them.
In the end, I think it is necessary to create a mechanism together with users, including e-LAWS. There are legal tech users, and bureaucrats are also users, so if we can create guidelines together with users, we will be able to create better products.
In that case, if you can work hard to translate it well for everyone at Legal Tech and publish it to the world, I believe that a democratic law that can be touched by ordinary people will be created, so I hope that we can realize that together. Thank you very much for your time today.

: Thank you very much. Now that we have had a productive discussion and it is time, I would like to conclude today's proceedings.
I would like to make a minute of today's meeting and disclose it after everyone checks it later. In addition, if you do not have any objection to today's materials, I would like to basically disclose all of them on the Digital Agency website.
Thank you very much for joining us today.

()