Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Working Group (First)

Overview

Date and Time: Thursday, February 10, 2022 (2022) from 17:00 to 18:00
Location: Online
Agenda:
1. Opening
2. Proceedings
  1. Proposed policy for inspection and review of compliance with the Digital Principles
  2. How to proceed with the future working group
  3. Establishment of the digitalization Study Team for Legal Affairs
  4. Exchange of opinions
3. Adjournment

Materials

Related Information

The first Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Working Group was held. A cross-sectional inspection and review of regulation was started.

Minutes, etc.

Date

Thursday, February 10, 2022 (2022) from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Location

Online Meetings

Attendees

Chairman

Su Beng Seiichi Kobayashi

Members

Junji Annen (Attorney-at-law, Professor of the Graduate School of Law
Tatsuhiko Inadani (Professor, Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University)
Katsuya Uenoyama (President of PKSHA Technology, Inc.)
Takafumi Ochiai (Attorney at law, Atsumi & Sakai, Foreign Law Joint Enterprise)
Akiko Sugawara (Managing Director and Head of Policy Planning, Keizai Doyukai)
Katsunori Nemoto (Senior Managing Director, Japan Business Federation)

Minutes

Secretariat (Matsuda): Now that it is on time, we would like to hold the first "Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee Working Group Meeting."

I'm Mr. Matsuda, Counsellor of Digital Agency. Nice to meet you.
First of all, I would like to ask Senior Vice-Minister for Digital Affairs Kobayashi, who is the chair of this working group, to give an address before the opening of the working group. Thank you very much.

Senior Vice-Minister for Digital Affairs Kobayashi: We had a very detailed discussion at the Working Group, thank you for gathering online today.

From today, the review of specific reforms in Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee will finally begin. Already, the Secretariat has worked very hard to confirm the law of this country, which is about 10,000, and as a result, we have found about 5,000 provision with limited analog means. I believe that this number of analog provision is proof that the digitalization of this country has been blocked. It seems to be a big wall, but considering that this extremely rich country is still going around thanks to our seniors, if we can break through the 5,000 mark, I believe that this country has a large potential for growth, or rather, it is a number that I think has only potential for growth.

If we can realize the initiative to review 5,000 at once, it will have an impact that will completely rewrite the specifications of the social system of this country. It will solve the labor shortage of people in area, and it will be a improvements in productivity for companies. I believe that new solutions and digital methods will also become new industries.

In particular, the abolition of the use of seals, which was carried out in advance, has increased the productivity of companies and the convenience of people. In addition, over the past two years, the market for electronic contract services that replace seals has grown by about two times. I believe that our efforts are important in solving the Issue of this country and creating growing industries.

Today, first of all, the experts and we at the Secretariat will share our awareness of the policy and method of reform, and we will start discussions with each ministry and agency in the future.

Finally, I would like to share an important point. Whether or not we can review 5,000 at once through this reform depends on whether or not all ministries and agencies can have the motivation to review their own rules autonomously. This is a little different from the way regulatory reform has been doing so far. If so, I believe that the way we, the Working Group, discuss will change, and it will be important how to support the reform of each ministry and agency, and how to increase the number of people who will support and work positively on it. Rather than clashing, I would like to advance this Working Group with a stance of moving forward together, hugging each other's shoulders. Thank you very much.

Secretariat (Matsuda): Next, I would like to ask each of the members to say a few words. First of all, I would like to ask you a few words, Mr. Annen.

Annen Member: I really just wanted to say a few words. I'm Annen from Chuo University Law School. Nice to meet you.

Secretariat (Matsuda): . Next, Member Inadani, nice to meet you.

Member Inadani: Nice to meet you. I'm Tatsuhiko Inadani from the Graduate School of Law at Kyoto University. Nice to meet you.

Secretariat (Matsuda): . Next, Member Uenoyama, nice to meet you.

Mr. Uenoyama: Basically I will do my best in PKSHA Technology, a group of technologies that make natural languages understood by software, is mainly engaged in machine learning and technology. My name is Uenoyama.

I am very interested in the interaction between natural language documents such as documents and legal documents and computers, so I would like to discuss various things. Thank you.

Secretariat (Matsuda): . Next, Mr. Ochiai, please.

Ochiai Member: Thank you very much, Atsumi & Sakai Law Office. I also serve as an expert committee member of the regulatory reform Promotion Council. Nice to meet you.

Secretariat (Matsuda): . Next, Mr. Sugawara, please.

SUGAWARA Member: Thank you, Keizai Doyukai. I also serve concurrently as regulatory reform Working at the Digital infrastructure Promotion Council, so I would like to work closely with you. Thank you very much.

Secretariat (Matsuda): Thank you very much. Mr. Nemoto, nice to meet you.

Nemoto Constituent: Thank you, Federation of Economic Organizations. I have been in Issue for many years, so I would like to make every effort to tackle this issue. Thank you very much.

Secretariat (Matsuda): . In addition, Member Masashima is absent today due to personal reasons.

Then, the Secretariat will explain the establishment of this Working Group in accordance with Materials 1 to 3.

First, I would like to ask about the establishment of a working group.

Although it will be approved by the Prime Minister, we have already explained the details in advance, so only the main points will be discussed.

Under Digital Extraordinary Administrative Advisory Committee, the task of the Working Group is to establish a process to confirm compliance with specific digital principles and to promote inspections and reviews of existing regulation.

We are asking the Senior Vice-Minister for Digital to serve as the Chair and the members who are currently participating to serve as the members.

With regard to the operating guidelines, in principle, the materials distributed by the Working Group will be made public. In principle, the minutes of the Working Group will be made public. On the other hand, in the following cases, if the Working Group makes a decision, it will be possible to keep some or all of the materials or minutes undisclosed, and it is deemed that there is a risk that frank exchange of opinions or the neutrality of decision-making will be unduly impaired. We would like to decide on such handling only in some cases after the Working Group makes a decision.

In addition to this, I would like to proceed with the specific details and other parts to be determined by the Chair.

If there is anything you would like to confirm, please let us know.

If you do not mind, I would like to move on to the nomination of the Vice Chair of the Working Group now that you have understood this content.

In this Working Group, based on the Implementation Guidelines that I explained earlier, we would like to establish a Vice Chair as a position to conduct the specific progress of the proceedings and to substantially summarize and organize the opinions of each member. We would like to ask Mr. Annen to serve as Vice Chair, but what do you think?

(SAYS NO OBJECTION)

Secretariat (Matsuda): Thank you very much. Since you have no particular objections, I would like to appoint Mr. Annen as Vice Chairman. Then, Mr. Annen, if you don't mind, I would like to ask you to speak briefly as Vice Chairman and then host the meeting. Thank you very much.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . Thank you very much.

The Senior Vice-Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism just mentioned that there are 5,000 regulation where analog provision is taken, but that is only the case for regular law. There are laws, government and ministerial ordinances, as well as various other notifications and notifications, and perhaps a regulation in local governments and various guidelines from independent administrative agencies, so I think it will soon be more than ten thousand.

When I think about it, the more we have, the more we have to do all at once. If we try to defeat each of them, I don't know how many decades it will take. In any case, I think we have to deal with them cross-sectionally, like passing through them with caterpillars. At that time, as the Senior Vice-Minister said, there is no way we can confront the ministries and agencies in charge, and in the end, the ministries and agencies in charge have to do it voluntarily. In that case, no one will do anything without motivation, so I am keenly aware that discovering and reinforcing motivation to make such reforms is the most important mission we have to do.

I think there are a lot of things that I don't understand, but thank you very much.

Well, I'd like to start the proceedings right away. May I be the moderator?

Secretariat (Matsuda): Nice to meet you.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . Now, based on materials 4 and 5, I would like to ask for an explanation from the Secretariat.

Secretariat (Matsuda): .

I would like to explain briefly by projecting from Material 4.

This is the "Proposed Policy for Inspection and Review of Compliance with the Digital Principles."

The first page is partly confirmatory, but first of all, at the end of the year, we had the digital principles for structural reforms discussed and decided at the Digital Rincho. In the end, it was also decided by the Cabinet in Priority plan at the end of the year. I believe that the basic stance of the administration is to first consider the principles, such as the digital completion and Automation Principles, the Agile Governance Principles, the Principles for Public-Private Partnership, the Principles for Ensuring Interoperability, and the Principles for Using Common Infrastructure, in line with the principles decided by the Cabinet, and then consider the review together with the Digital Rincho.

On page 2, as mentioned by both the Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs and Mr. Annen, the approximately 5,000 provision are only a part of the total. We have identified approximately 10,000 laws, cabinet orders, and ministerial ordinances, and we believe that there are analog regulations for seven items. To be specific, approximately 5,000 provision are subject to inspection, and the identification process has been completed.

In addition, as you can see below on the left side, there are 10,000 notifications in addition to this, 10,000 laws, cabinet orders, and ministerial ordinances, 10,000 notifications, and about 20000 notices. In addition, I believe there are guidelines established by independent administrative agencies. We are currently starting additional inspection work on this as well.

In the work items in the middle, the seven items that the Secretariat is actively inspecting have been identified. In addition to the law and notifications, the business community, including Keidanren and Doyukai, has been making considerable efforts to identify them. As a result of the Issue and provisions, including specific provisions, a considerable number of points have been identified as to what will be effective. In total, we have received nearly 2,000 cases, and we are conducting detailed examinations on these.

With regard to the status of the work on the far right, I would like to kick off the work today by holding a working group meeting in early February on the application of precedent cases and typologies, and at the same time, I would like to take concrete steps while communicating with each ministry and agency.

As Mr. Sugawara mentioned earlier, I believe it is important to horizontally expand what we have already done in regulatory reform. I believe it is important for each ministry and agency to clearly show that they are using this type of technology when they are implementing reforms to this extent.

We are currently identifying the notifications and notices, but as soon as the identification work is completed, we will conduct the same inspection and take concrete steps to review them.

As for the requests from the business community, I believe that we will carefully select those that can be classified rather than individual items. As far as I analyze the requests I have received so far, I recognize that about 70% of the requests are made because they feel the need for the same seven items as the original ones, such as visual inspection and inspections, but other than that, we are starting to scrutinize the new classification of Issue.

At the bottom, I wrote "Support for local government's Efforts." In the case of regulation and some other Issue, our agenda this time is to support efforts that are actively and voluntarily undertaken by local governments. Separately, in consultation with Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, I wrote that we will present a manual and provide information on previous examples. I would like to advance efforts to support each local government.

Next, I would like to narrow down the points because I have already explained to the members in advance that the following is a categorization. I would like you to recognize it as a kind of draft to discuss what kind of support or response is necessary in terms of technical matters and systems in order to discuss how far we can go with each ministry by classifying them to some extent.

For example, in the current situation of visual inspection and on-site inspection regulation, "visual inspection," "actual site," "patrol," and "deployment of watchmen" are specified by law. Or, although it is written as "visual inspection, etc." in law, we do not know to what extent alternative means are approved, so we are investigating what may only be visual inspection after all.

There are several types, including those that determine compliance with certain standards from the left, those that investigate actual conditions and trends, and those that monitor. This is divided into Phases 2 and 3.

Regarding Phase 2, information collection will be changed digitally. However, this is classified as being evaluated by people.

With regard to Phase 3, I believe that it will be possible to use digital technology to refine, automate, and fully automate not only the digitalization of information collection but also judgment. Therefore, after roughly dividing Phase 3 from Phase 2 and Phase 3, I am thinking of coordinating with each ministry on how much can be dealt with in regulation while applying it individually.

Regarding the categorization of regular inspection, it is a typical pattern that law is uniformly regulated to be once a year, once a month, or once a day. This is divided into phases 2 and 3.

Regarding third party inspections, the classifications are shown in the left-most box. In the middle is voluntary inspection. In many cases, voluntary inspection and third party inspection are combined into a certain regulation, but they are arranged separately. On the far right is the classification of investigation and measurement.

In Phase 2, basically, if data can be always obtained digitally, can we use it to extend the inspection cycle? This classification is arranged as Phase 2, extension of the inspection cycle, etc.

In Phase 3, we will abolish the rule that if data is always collected and analyzed, it must be inspected once in a certain period of time, or we will change it to the form of constant monitoring. This is Phase 3.

This is a categorization of "full-time / full-time" regulation. Broadly speaking, (1) and (2) mean that (1) is a full-time or full-time regulation mainly for facilities to check things, management of products, and quality control.

Regarding (2), we are grouping them based on the fact that they are required to be stationed or dedicated mainly when dealing with people.

In addition, if it is a review of the resident duty, is it possible to mitigate the regulation by remote monitoring and the like? As for the full-time duty, it is also Phase 2 to see if it can be streamlined by relaxing the qualification requirements for full-time staff.

It may be quite bold, but Phase 3 is to eliminate such regulation or change it into another form by thoroughly using technology.

Next, on page 6, we will classify the types of regulation that require public certificates, training, face-to-face access, and written documents. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, there are various training courses for public qualifications, but while some are online, some are not yet fully available. Therefore, regarding the training course, the classification is the online part of the training course and whether or not the online procedure for applying for the training course can be performed. For example, whether or not the digital issuance of the registration card and certificate of completion can be performed, the extent of digitalization differs depending on the business flow.

In the end, it will be Phase 3, and as a general rule, it will be based on digital completion, so what can be done will be digital in principle, but I would like to discuss what types of parts can be done by applying them individually. The posting of public certificates and the viewing and inspection of public information are organized in the same way.

Next is how to proceed in the future.

After kicking off today and discussing the basic policies for the categorization and phase of regulation, in February, at the conference later this month, we will hear from multiple companies that provide remote monitoring cameras, drones, robots, AI, and so on, or we will hear from related regulation that have conducted a preliminary review of ministries and agencies. Exactly, as Dr. Annen mentioned earlier, I think it is important to listen carefully to what kind of motivation and what kind of Issue there was. After doing this, we will consider finalizing the basic policies for the categorization and phase of regulation.

In March, I would like to ask each ministry and agency to come and discuss the four themes of on-site inspection and visual inspection, resident and full-time personnel, periodic inspections, and lectures, posting, public inspection, and viewing.

In addition, at the end of March, the working group will finalize the policies for reviewing the categorization and phases based on hearings with relevant ministries and agencies. I would like to make it as firm as possible that the categorization will be firmly determined and the application will be brought here for major regulation.

In April, we will discuss the main items on the premise that we will have additional discussions on the regulation items that were not taken up at the intensive meeting in March, and that we will complete the identification of notifications and notifications by then.

On that basis, we will compile a comprehensive review plan for regulation in the spring.

At the same time, we would like to take administrative action on what will be issued as the broad guidelines of the Working Group. We have started communication with the relevant ministries and agencies from the end of the year, and we have started discussions, including at the end of the year and the beginning of the new year, while presenting the proposal for categorization that I just mentioned. We are about to start coordination to specify the possibility of application a little. Therefore, we would like to coordinate with the relevant ministries and agencies based on the policy decided here, and discuss the results here.

That's all.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of .
If you have any comments or questions about the explanation, please feel free to ask anyone.
Mr. Sugawara, please come in.

SUGAWARA Member: Thank you, . I would like to make two points.

First of all, there is a proposal for the classification, but I think it is a good way to organize it because the classification is very easy to understand. From now on, while hearing, etc., the policy for the classification and phase will be finally determined, but I feel that there is a difference in the level even in the four classifications presented, so I think it is necessary to discuss with you once and organize it.

At that time, I think it will be necessary to classify them, including whether or not they are necessary in the first place, that is, whether or not they are not necessary. For example, I think that the training and posting at the end are at the level that each ministry and agency can start immediately. On the other hand, for permanent and full-time employees, it is sufficient to respond with digital technology in normal times, but from the perspective of how to respond in the event of an unexpected situation, there are differences in level depending on each type, such as which phase will use digital technology, where will be the eyes of people, and where will be the permanent presence of people. Therefore, I thought that it is necessary to organize the weight of that and the procedure for whether or not to start from the important Issue when proceeding.

Another point is about the schedule. First of all, we will sort out the goals at the time of March and spring. In the materials of the first Digital Rincho, I remember that the next three years will be the intensive period. First of all, I think it is important to properly create a three year overall plan, plan by turning PDCA even in the middle stage, such as what point we have reached now, and make such things visible. Therefore, I would like you to devise how to make a schedule.

That's all.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . If the Secretariat has any thoughts at this stage, please let me know.

Secretariat (Matsuda): . We believe that both are very important points, and I believe that the degree of difficulty varies considerably depending on the project. Administrative procedures have been discussed over a considerable period of time, and I believe that we can discuss how to take what remains at once into a response based on digital principles. On the other hand, I believe that there may be differences in the depth of Issue depending on the target and type, including permanent and full-time positions from Mr. SUGAWARA.

We are now beginning to hear the opinions of various ministries and agencies. In that sense, the Secretariat will make preparations so that we can have more detailed discussions on what responses there will be and where Issue will be.

In addition, the overall schedule is for three years, and the schedule I presented today is for the spring. First of all, the schedule for the spring is written in some parts. If we try to categorize the requests received from the business community, we will first conduct a trial to see if we can do some until the spring, and then we may have a camp in the fall. I think we will discuss a new schedule in the fall.

In addition, I believe that there are quite a few things that require a technical validation, and as Mr. Sugawara said, there are some regulation that can be fixed immediately, but I believe that a technical validation will be made after a thorough technical validation, and a technical validation will be made within a period of one year or six months. Based on this, I would like to conduct overall planning.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . Please, Mr. Nemoto.

Nemoto Constituent: Thank you, I would like to mention matters related to the current point first, and other points of awareness a little.

When we start to discuss what to do about security, emergencies, and so on, there are a lot of papers saying that we can't do it because we have it at the very beginning, and it is a pattern that we end up doing it. However, assuming that we are talking about normal times, there is no way that we can do something remotely if something physically breaks down. What we do physically is what we do physically. It tends to flow into extreme discussions, so I think that if we do not make the first entrance, that is, the monitoring part, digital, we will not be able to move forward at all. We have probably identified 5,000 cases in person, and based on our experience so far, I believe that 5,000 objections will be raised against each of them.

From the perspective of motivation, it may be possible to consider incorporating systems such as the Pay-Go system in the United States by digitalization or digitization. This is just an idea.

I would like to make one comment to go back to the extreme story I mentioned earlier. It will be difficult if we cut everything with technology and need validation for it. Laws and regulation will never catch up with technology, so we will create a system that will never be able to use the latest ones. Unless we change the regulation system into a system in the form of what we want to achieve, it will not function in the future. It will go against the purpose of agile governance, so I would like you to take it in that direction.

In addition, I would like to make a detailed point. In the future process until early spring that you explained to me, it says "consideration" of the Review Plan, but I think the Prime Minister said "compilation." I believe that the compilation will be done by the Policy Board, so the Working Group will consider it, but I would like to confirm that it is OK.

What I think is very important in Mr. Sugawara's opinion is that in three years, we will go as far as we can, or we will do everything, so I think it is necessary to express our rough schedule in a visible manner to some extent.

There are two major topics that go beyond the scope of the Working Group. In fact, the Senior Vice-Minister pointed out the issue of affixing seals, and we are very helpful. However, what we found after conducting a questionnaire survey this time is that although the issue of affixing seals has been eliminated, when we actually go to the window, there is a problem that there has been almost no improvement. You mentioned the issue of local local government earlier, but it is said that the last issue, regulation, may be a problem if we do not check each sentence of the guidelines for handling documents at the window of local local government. What the people of Japan feel most is the window of the city of public office, and I believe that we must do so.

Finally, I would like to talk about what to do in the world of metaverse more than three years later. If we do not discuss what to do in the world of metaverse, the actual situation will probably run out, such as contractual acts, but there will be a world in which there is almost no public allowance, and only Japan will be delayed in the formation of rules, or the rules will be imposed on Japan. I am very concerned about this. Since we are discussing about the rules in the real world, there are concerns about whether we can go next, but I would like to take this into consideration, and I would like to work on it with a sense of crisis that if we do not do it soon, we will be left behind. That is all for my comments.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . Am I correct in assuming that this is Mr. Nemoto's recognition of the division of roles between the Parent Committee and the Working Group?

Secretariat (Matsuda): Nemoto, regarding the schedule, our assumption is that there will be an opportunity to present the plan compiled by the Working Group to the Parent Committee in late March. After that, we assume that the plan will be finally compiled under the Prime Minister, so we are thinking that the Working Group will elaborate the plan.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . But it's almost the middle of February, so we have to hurry quite a bit. Mr. Ochiai, I wonder if your hand was raised.

Ochiai Member: Thank you very much, Thank you very much. I would also like to make some comments.

One is agile governance, which I believe you mentioned earlier. It was considered at the regulatory reform Promotion Council when it compiled an opinion paper on regulatory reform in the digital age. What I realized when I discussed it with the officials at the time was that performance approach would be a legal and technical measure. The performance regulations that had been in place in the 1998 s were really about not stipulating technical matters in law, such as lowering technical standards to JIS marks, but I think performance approach of matters that are fulfilled by human actions and the existence of things is necessary in modern discussions. By advancing performance approach, when technology eventually develops, there will be some parts that are not sure whether we can respond to all of them, but I think it is important to include in the final results that we can interpret them with some buffer.

The second point is that in addition to written documents and seals, visual inspection had previously been conducting infrastructure-related discussions at the Growth Strategies WG of the regulatory reform Promotion Council. At that time, one of the requests was that there should be guidance and a catalog of which technologies should be used. At that time, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism took the lead in responding to the request and created a list that introduced the efforts of businesses related to roads and ports. I think there are ways to make such technologies easier to access, so rather than actually changing regulation itself, I think the goal is to go to the point where implementation is done. If we are aware of this, I think it would be good if each ministry and agency would voluntarily work on using these things and introduce them together.

Finally, regarding the third point, I think that local rules are the most important point in order to make the results easier to see. It is not the contact point of the central government but the public office of the city or the town hall that I interact with in my personal life. It is important to change the regulation of the government, but in the sense that I can feel it, it is also important how to proceed with local rules. I think it will take more time, and even if we do it at the same time, the results will be seen in local government later, so I thought it would be good to start working on it as soon as possible.

That's all.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . The point about local rules was pointed out by several members. That's absolutely right. Rather, I think local government is more in need due to a labor shortage. When I say that it will be possible to improve it this way, I feel that they will be quite happy to do it. I think it is a fact that it is difficult to change trains because they think that the cost of changing trains is high. So, if we can manage this very place with hands-on, I somehow think that there will be a foundation for rapid change. Next, Mr. Inadani, please. Thank you for waiting.

Member Inadani: . Nice to meet you.

I would like to make some comments and ask a few questions, but I believe that the main direction of the reform this time is not to change regulation into a risk management based on an ex ante risk management type of governance method, but rather to change regulation into an autonomous decentralized risk management that utilizes the ingenuity of companies and business operators. In that case, I believe that there is also a pattern of promoting the categorization of safety arguments for fulfilling accountability in Okinawa, for example, from the perspective of the categorization of Okinawa.

When I think about that, as a model case, I think it is quite important to ask people who want to do it to cooperate as much as possible. Innovation often starts with deviant behavior, and I think deviation is a movement that comes out because regulation looks inefficient and wants to do something about it.

If that is the case, with the cooperation of those who are positive about such a point, as you pointed out earlier, if we seek something like zero risk and talk about responding to natural disasters, we will never go around. Instead, if we think about the safety demonstration based on a rational risk-based approach, we will first consider a model together, and if we think about the type of categorization that can be developed more and more if we are on the model, I think it will be easier to expand horizontally. In addition, I think this method can easily lead to the establishment of a process that can quickly absorb the opinions of business operators with creativity. For example, based on the idea of agile governance, when reviewing an existing regulation or type, I think that business operators can create a new line of movement to change the way of doing things by starting with the fact that they can do something like this. I think it would be good to have one.

One thing that I was concerned about from the perspective of risk management is that in regulation, which is replacing human beings with digital ones, there are regulation that are almost unrelated to risk, as I believe Mr. Sugawara has said that they are necessary.

For example, from the perspective of visual inspection, I don't think it is necessary to have only humans conduct on-site surveys for damage and disaster surveys. To be frank, it is possible that identification by drones or AI is more accurate. In that case, I think it is possible that this will be a completely different story, or a completely different story from regulation, which was originally called from the perspective of regulation and risk management. From the perspective of risk management, it is possible that it will be changed as it is quite different in nature, or it may be possible to lose it. It is just a matter of writing that you should check it properly and giving incentives, so I think there must be a different way of doing regulation. risk management

I don't know if it's good or not, but among various regulation, frankly speaking, there are quite a few that seem to be de facto dead, so I think it's possible to start with such things. For example, I think there are regulation that seem to be effectively protected by a quite expansive interpretation. If it becomes such, in addition to what is not done because it is expensive, I think it will not affect risk management even if it is not done. If the existence of such regulation becomes clear, for example, it will be one of the evidence that we don't have to do the way of seriously seeking security. Therefore, I think it is one of the ways to rationalize unnecessary regulation little by little by combining several approaches like the one I just mentioned.

In addition, I am a little concerned about what you pointed out earlier. I don't know if it is better to say central government agencies and local agencies, but I think the relationship of interpretation authority between the central government agencies and the agencies in each prefecture is complicated. For example, I think the Industrial Safety and Health Act is in the form that the Labor Standards Inspection Office has interpretation authority for the standards of each area, but I have heard that it is troublesome if they are divided nationwide, so in the end, they are brought to the central government for judgment. I understand that there is a problem of the balance of decentralization between the local government and the central government, but I think that it is important to organize them so that they can be operated in a way that is more in line with the digitalization from the perspective of institutional reform and organizational reforms.

If such things proceed, I think that you will feel that you have changed into a business operator who is actually active in local areas as you said earlier, and that it has become more convenient.

I'm sorry, I'm not very organized, but that's all for me.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . Would you like anything else? Mr. Uenoyama, please.

Mr. Uenoyama: Basically I will do my best in , but I would like to make a few comments. I would like to make two points.

First of all, as a weapon to be categorized and to form a consensus by involving various stakeholders in the future, I believe that the definition of an evaluation scale for the shift from Phase 1 to Phase 2 has already been discussed, and I believe that it will be a key.

The background is that when we talk only about accuracy, software is basically a kind of pattern recognition or inductive inference, so there are cases where the accuracy is less than 100. Therefore, when we compare Phase 1 and Phase 2, for this reason, in the sense that Phase 1 is consistently good, I think that the point of design the definition of the ruler not only in terms of accuracy but also in a slightly wider and more convenient form has probably already been discussed, and I thought that would be the point. This is the first point.

One more thing, I believe there was a discussion earlier about the design of motivation when involving each ministry and agency. This is really just for your reference, but I would like to introduce one point that I think will be a key when we move people in large companies, where many people work, with digital things like this. It will be a little qualitative, but digital is naturally a means, so I think it will be unexpectedly important to talk about a sense of satisfaction about what the division of roles between people and software is in digital society in the future.

This talk will be about automating certain things, but digital and software are not about automating people's work by substituting them. From the other side, according to Audrey Tan and others, software is a shared space of wisdom, and there is also a way of saying that we should make it so that everyone can use it. I think there are various ways of saying that automation will make people's work more vacant, so people will be able to do more human-like work. I think it would be interesting to discuss this including such points, because there are unexpectedly many stakeholders, and this kind of concept is very important when working with so-called large companies.

Best regards

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of .
The concept of understanding is really necessary. I am keenly aware of it. Then, if there is at least one more person who can speak, please let me know.

Ochiai Member: Thank you very much, . Is that okay?

As a narrative to motivate people today, I think there is also a society with a declining population. I think that theme is always included in discussions and agreements at the regulatory reform Promotion Conference and other meetings. In the Japanese context, the curve of the declining population can be seen to some extent, and even if the population increases after the establishment of the dependents Agency, the current trend should not change for a while. Therefore, it is clear at first glance that even if it is sufficient now, it will be insufficient in the future. So, I think that it would be good to add these points together. That is all.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of You are quite right, but is there any story that could cheer you up a little more? Nemoto-san, do you have any wisdom?

Nemoto Constituent: Thank you, Administration, they would be angry, but I believe that basically organization operates on a budget and a fixed number of personnel. Therefore, I just mentioned something like a pay-go. I simply understand that it is probably the most effective story at the central government to ask Ministry of Finance to withdraw its reasoning and create a gap in the budget that can be used for policy if it is done properly.

When I went to local government, a slightly different logic works, and there is a logic that says, "I won't change my job." So, I don't have any ideas at this point about what to do about it. That's all.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of .

Isn't it wrong to say that it makes my job easier? I'm sure it will, but I wonder if I need to add a little more value. Would you like anything else?

I would like to confirm with the Secretariat. In each area, I believe that evaluation and judgment will be more important in Phase 3. As a goal, I will let machines do that as much as possible. Of course, it is absolutely true that the narrative of the division of roles with humans is necessary, but I think it is necessary to state that at least the goal is to let AI and machines do what they can. Is that correct? I would like to visit the Secretariat.

Secretariat (Matsuda): . That is exactly what the Secretariat is thinking. In that sense, if it is written as Phases 1, 2, and 3, including the fact that we must aim for Phase 3, we would like to take advantage of the evolution of technology to bring about what we can achieve to that point.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of I thought it would be good if you could recognize that this is not necessarily a distant goal, but a goal that should be realized in the near future. Thank you very much. Would you like anything else?

Senior Vice-Minister for Digital Affairs Kobayashi: We had a very detailed discussion at the , Vice Chairman, may

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of Of course, please.

Senior Vice-Minister for Digital Affairs Kobayashi: We had a very detailed discussion at the Secretariat, but I thought it was very good to have a discussion with everyone who has expertise in each area, because various perspectives could be further included.

In particular, in terms of creating motivation, as you said, I believe that the way of the core members is really like that. If we move to Phase 2 or Phase 3, as a result, some ministries and agencies will have to develop systems, and I think this is the specialty of the Inadani members, but if we change to a post-check type, we will have to strengthen the executive system and do things like digitalization. Then, it will inevitably require people and budgets, so in that sense, I think we must fully adopt a pay-go approach in negotiations.

At the same time, we need to share the narrative, and I think this is what Mr. Uenoyama said. It will be easier for everyone if we do this, but a huge amount of data will enter the digital world again, and new wisdom and innovation will be born from it. I always try to say that the market for electronic contract services has doubled due to the abolition of the seal, but I think it is necessary for everyone to say that a new market will also be created there.

I have official duties, so I will leave here. I would like to think that it is an initiative to autonomously reform oneself and create an administration, so I would like to ask for your cooperation.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . I understand that you have been very busy, but I would like to ask for your continued guidance.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of Would you like anything else?

Nemoto Constituent: Thank you, , may I ask you one more question?

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of Of course.

Nemoto Constituent: Thank you, time, only one point.

As you are all aware, there is actually a series of procedures. We also make various requests for regulatory reform, but only some procedures are often renewed. For example, recently, we have decided to make a license course online, or renew a license, but only after the course is made online, do you bring a certificate indicating that the course is completed and confirm your identity? There is a state where there is no digitalization, and I wonder what the digitalization was for, and I personally wonder what I should do about my next My Number Card.

There is also a posting obligation for road occupancy, so we put up a sign saying, "We are doing this after obtaining permission for occupancy." Applications are made online, but unfortunately, we still have to go and get it, or we have to print it out and physically post it. This is still the case. The last part of the posting may be so that everyone can see it, but there is room for more ingenuity, and it must be viewed as a series of steps.

The story of the seal is all related to it. At the beginning, Mr. Annen said something like caterpillar, so I would like to ask you to cultivate all the fields so that there are no gaps in the fields, as if looking at them as lines or as planes. That's all.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of , this is a must-have request. It is highly stated that even in structural reforms, digital completion, from the entrance to the exit, will be meaningless unless it is digital. I thought that this is a major principle that we should not forget. Thank you very much for pointing out its importance once again.

Now that you have made your remarks, I would like to ask if it would be possible for you to proceed with the matter, although I would not say it is procedural.

Regarding agenda (3), we would also like to receive an explanation from the Secretariat.

At the Secretariat (Suga), I will explain about Agenda (3). Please refer to Materials 6 and 7 on "Establishment of the digitalization Review Team for Legal Affairs".

For the time being, the highest priority for the Working Group is to establish a review policy while refining the types and applications. However, looking ahead a little, I believe that it is necessary to install the system as a mechanism in the government or Japanese society, rather than making the work currently being carried out by the Digital Ad Hoc Liaison Office a temporary one. At that time, several major Issue are in sight, and first of all, the existing regulation must be updated. In addition, for the new law that will be released every year, the process of how to ensure the compatibility of the digital principles must be urgently developed.

In addition, with regard to the existing regulation, it is not a matter of updating once during this review, but it is necessary to continue to update intermittently in accordance with the evolution of technology, and there is also the issue of how to structure it. In this regard, we will firmly build processes and systems within the Government with the cooperation of Legal Tech.

In addition, as you have pointed out many times, it is not necessarily the so-called law that functions as rules and regulations in society. In that case, it is gradually becoming clear that the Government cannot grasp and manage the whole picture. The reason for the survey with the cooperation of the business community was that if we do not do so, we cannot visualization the entire rule. However, I would like the Government to cooperate with the people of private sector instead of understanding all the rules in an integrated manner. In that case, I believe that we will have to discuss where to divide the roles and to what extent the Government will be firmly responsible.

Also, with the cooperation of the people of private sector, we face the problem that there is no master data for the rules. Now, the base registry of the law Data, which is equivalent to the digital original copy, is not subject to the duty of the government to develop and provide it at the same time as the promulgation of the law. Therefore, the government must establish a system so that such a thing can be developed properly. In addition, information is not published sporadically in PDF, but must be published in a format that can be connected digitally and can be understood as a whole.

If we try to do that, it will be impossible to prepare and release solid digital data by the date of promulgation under the current business flow, so we will have to do BPR within the government.

I would like to have a thorough discussion on Issue, create a roadmap, and finally report to the Working Group.

I would like to fully inform the members of the Working Group about the schedule, so although it is a voluntary participation, I would like to ask you if you can participate.

Best regards

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of ? If you have any comments or questions on this point, please feel free to ask.

Nemoto Constituent: Thank you,

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of , what kind of case is it, for example?

Nemoto Constituent: Thank you, For example, the Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (CSTI) is currently creating a database on university research, but the use of this database is limited to public sectors such as national institutions, and private sector cannot be accessed. In addition, the area Economic Analysis System (RESAS) created by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry covers individual transaction data, and has a very large database. This database was also created to revitalize area, but private sector companies cannot access data, and employees of local local government can do so, and in fact, there are considerable restrictions.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . Mr. Suga, do you have any opinions or comments at this stage?

Secretariat (Suga): Thank you for your visit to . I would like to develop it based on the idea that the government should responsibly provide it widely as a public good. Part of the law database is already included in the legal work support system called e-LAWS, and it is openly provided in the system called e-Gov. I believe that the basic idea is to steadily expand the quality and quantity of the rules to be included in the system.

Nemoto Constituent: Thank you, .

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of That's right, so let's consider it positively. Thank you very much.

This is what this is about, and I understand very well that we must actively participate.

Next, there will be a time for exchange of opinions in Agenda (4). You have expressed your opinions a lot, but if you have any opinions on how to proceed overall, please let me know.

Mr. Ochiai, please.

Ochiai Member: Thank you very much, . I would like to make a statement as a whole. There was a discussion about having each ministry and agency take action with incentives, but I believe that the goal of the administration is to have the ministries and agencies that respond to the matter voluntarily review it at the end of the day, or to have the ministries and agencies voluntarily correct the necessary materials if they come up with them without being told to do so. I believe that administrative reform means that what has not been done voluntarily until now can be done quickly when there is a need to change it. I believe that it is important to model ministries and agencies that can be viewed positively in terms of organizing teams of each ministry and agency and making proactive efforts, and to spread this horizontally. I believe that this initiative will be able to move quickly to the next different theme within the next three years, and I hope that administrative reform will advance in that sense.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of . I guess each ministry and agency now has a division that promotes IT.

Secretariat (Matsuda) There is , and the point I just received is that the Minister and the Senior Vice-Minister are in charge of Digital Agency, regulatory reform, and administrative reform, and the Digital Consultation is being held, so I am also working on the Digital Agency side, but there is also a function of how Digital Agency will promote DX of each ministry and agency together, so I think there are various ways to think about it, including the budget, that regulatory reform cannot do alone.

Also, in relation to local government, communication between the people of Digital Agency and local government is increasing considerably, and there are teams that are discussing how to improve the window service in local government and what the Government can do, so I hope that these discussions will be linked well.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of That's right. Thank you very much. Do you have any other opinions on how to proceed with the whole thing?

Mr. Inadani, please.

Member Inadani: : The talk about digital legal affairs that you introduced at the end, and for example, the talk about the review that I mentioned earlier, can be completed digitally, for example, by looking at the centralized law database, if the business operators point out on the platform that they are currently caught in this, it will be automatically connected to the regulatory reform cycle, and in some cases, it will be reviewed, in other words, the review procedure itself will be completed digitally. If we proceed with this in mind that we can combine it well in the future, I think it will be easier for the purpose of agile governance to be utilized, and the input of rapidly changing situations and the voices of business operators on the ground will be reflected more and more, and voluntary efforts will be more fruitful.

I'm sorry, but it might have already been considered.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of .

Would you like anything else?

Then, it seems that the time I have received is running out, so I would like to conclude today's proceedings. Thank you for your active discussion.

Finally, I would like to ask the Secretariat to explain about the next Working Group.

Secretariat (Matsuda): We are currently coordinating the schedule for the next Working Group meeting, and I would like to contact all of you as soon as possible.

As for today's proceedings, I believe that there are no contents that are not suitable for disclosure, so I would like to prepare the minutes later and disclose them after everyone has checked them.

If you have no particular objection to the materials, we would like to disclose all of them on the Digital Rincho website.

That's all.

Vice-Chairman: You have no objections to the opening of to the public.

I grant you no objection. Thank you.

That's all for today's meeting. Thank you very much for your active discussion throughout.