Third Liaison Conference of Relevant Ministries and Agencies Related to the digitalization of Business

Overview

Date and time: February 29, 2024 (Thursday) from 13:15 to 14:00
Location: Online
Agenda:
1. Opening
2. Proceedings
  1. Status of responses to digitalization, such as public procedures
  2. Current status of surveys for the development of administrative procedure systems for business operators
  3. Status of Consideration of Employment Related Subsidies DX
  4. About IT introduction subsidies
3. Adjournment

Materials

Minutes, etc.

Members present

Chairman

Tomoya Hasui (Deputy Director General of Strategy & Organization Group, Digital Agency)

Members

Royo NAKAJIMA (Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary (Assistant to the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary))
Hiroki Nakamura (Deputy Director-General of the Conference on the Realization of the Digital Garden City Nation Vision Secretariat)
Hiroshi Yoshida Hei (Deputy Director General of the Secretariat of the Cabinet Secretariat Digital Administration and Finance Reform Council)
Seiichi Ito (Deputy Director-General for cybersecurity and Information Technology)
Shigeyuki Tani (Director General of the National Police Agency)
*Representative: Ayumi Shiono (Deputy Director of the Planning Division, Director-General's Secretariat, National Police Agency)
Yu Ozaki (Deputy Director General, Supervisory Bureau, Financial Services Agency
Reiko Kondo (Director of the Planning Division, Minister's Secretariat, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications)
Koichi Nakamura (Deputy Director General for cybersecurity and Computerization of the Secretariat of the Ministry of Justice
*Representative: Manami Kojima (Director of the Policy Planning and Information Management Office, Secretary Division, Minister's Secretariat, Ministry of Justice
MATSUO Hirotaka (Director for cybersecurity and Information Technology, MOFA)
*Representative: Mitsue Morita (Director of the Information and Communications Division, Minister's Secretariat
Toshio Uematsu (Ministry of Finance, Deputy Director-General of the Secretariat of the National Tax Agency
Hironori Toyooka (Director General to the Minister of State for Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT))
Kazuhiro Mita (cybersecurity Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Deputy Director-General for Information)
Hideto Sugaya (Deputy Director-General for cybersecurity and Information Technology, Ministry of
Tomohiro Ushiyama (Deputy Director General of the Secretariat, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (in charge of IT strategies))
Tetsuya Matsuura (Executive Director of the Management Support Department of the Small and
Hirohide Okamoto (Deputy Director General for cybersecurity and Information, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and
Yoichi KAMIYA (Deputy Director-General for cybersecurity and Information Technology, Secretariat of the Ministry of
Motoyuki NAKANISHI (Deputy Minister for cybersecurity and Information Technology, Ministry of Defense)
UEGUCHI Hiroshi (Director of the Bank of Japan Business Bureau)

Minutes

Mr. Hasui: Thank you very much, Mr. Now that it is time, I would like to open the third Liaison Conference of Relevant Ministries and Agencies on digitalization and Other Business Operators.

I am Hasui from Digital Agency. I will be in charge of the proceedings of the meeting. Thank you for your continued support. I look forward to working with you today.

As for today's meeting, all members are participating online. Thank you very much for taking the time to attend.

Now, let's get down to business. The first is "Status of Responses to digitalization, Including Public Procedures," the second is "Current Status of Surveys for Administrative Procedure System Development for Businesses," the third is "Status of Consideration of Employment-Related Subsidies DX," and the fourth is "IT Introduction Subsidies."

First of all, I would like to ask Mr. Uematsu, Deputy Director-General of the National Tax Agency, to explain the "Status of Responses to digitalization, including Public Procedures" in Agenda 1.

Director General Uematsu: I'm Uematsu from the National Tax Agency. Nice to meet you.

Please refer to Attachment 1 "digitalization's Response to Public Procedures and Other Matters." This is an update on the response to digitalization's Public Procedures and Other Matters, which we discussed at the first meeting on November 30.

Please take a look at page 2 of the slide. First of all, regarding the second check mark, "Promotion of Mynaportal Cooperation on Employment Income Information," as stated in the first arrow feather, we are calling on industry organizations, etc. to submit e-Tax, and as stated in the second arrow feather, we are calling on employees, etc. of independent corporations, etc. under their jurisdiction to use e-Tax for final tax returns. Regarding the status of response, the blue letters are as reported last time, and the red letters are updated this time. In each ministries and agencies, etc., we are making sure that everyone is aware of them.

With regard to the second check mark, "expanding the number of business operators that can cooperate with Mynaportal," we are requesting that the business organizations under our jurisdiction to which the organizations that issue tax exemption certificates, etc. belong, but in January, we provided an explanation of our efforts to financial institutions, the Life Insurance Association of Japan, and the Non-Life Insurance Association of Japan, and we are preparing and coordinating for the issuance of notifications.

The second is the computerization of year-end adjustment procedures for arrow feather industry organizations, which is also being made known in each Mynaportal in conjunction with the ministries and agencies cooperation on employment income information.

Please take a look at page 3 of the slide. Third, in order to "promote the automatic attachment of tax payment information in applications," we asked each ministries and agencies to consider the possibility and timing of the modification of the application system that requires tax payment information, and we have received responses on the status of the consideration. There are many responses that require consideration, but we would like to have the National Tax Administration Agency consult with us on a case-by-case basis regarding high-priority systems.

Regarding the call to the local local government and financial institutions in the second arrow feather, we are explaining our efforts to financial institutions as needed, and we are preparing and coordinating to send notifications. In addition, we are preparing and coordinating with related ministries and agencies to inform the local local government.

With regard to the fourth initiative, "Expanding Online Inquiries for Deposits and Savings," we explained our efforts to financial institutions in January and February. We are also preparing and coordinating with related ministries and agencies for the issuance of notifications. We are also preparing and coordinating with related ministries and agencies for the dissemination of information to the local local government.

Please take a look at the fourth slide at the end. As I mentioned earlier, we have asked each Mynaportal to publicize the promotion of final tax return using Mynaportal cooperation, etc., in particular, the automatic input of salary information, the use of e-Tax from home, and the promotion of year-end tax adjustment using ministries and agencies cooperation, etc., and the results of the publicity are summarized in the table on the right. Although there are overlaps between each ministries and agencies, in total, more than 2,600 organizations in 14 ministries and agencies have been informed. I would like to thank you very much for your cooperation, and thanks to you, there has been no major confusion in the final tax return from February 16. We would like to ask for your continued cooperation.

That's all from me.

Mr. Hasui: Thank you very much, Mr. .

Thank you very much for the fact that we have once again informed more than 2,600 organizations about this matter with the cooperation of the relevant ministries and agencies. We have also reported this to the executives of the Agency, and we would like to ask for your continued cooperation. Thank you very much.

If you have any comments or questions about the explanation just given, please let us know.

Would that be all right?

Now, I would like to move on to the second item of the agenda, "Status of the investigation for the development of an administrative procedure system for business operators." Mr. Yoshida, Planning Officer of Digital Agency, would like to give an explanation.

Planning Officer Yoshida: Thank you for your introduction, my name is Yoshida, and I am a planning officer in Digital Agency.

Based on Material 2, I would like to report on the progress of the investigation on the development of an administrative procedure system for business operators, which I have been communicating since the last time.

I am very sorry to repeat this, but the purpose of this initiative is to investigate the current status of digitization of procedures in the systems of each ministry and agency in order to promote the use of various authentication and signature services for business procedures in each public authorities as a common function in Digital Agency.

This time, we will mainly work on understanding administrative procedures for business operators and subsidy applications. Through this, we would like to advance our support for the introduction of the common functions of gBizID and jGrants.

This time, first of all, I would like to advance the survey on subsidies. In the background, as you can see in the materials, in the Administrative Project Review in the fall, among the benefits and subsidies for businesses, there are problems such as illegal receiving, and it is said that digitalization should be made properly and validation of the effects of subsidy applications should be advanced. In this context, the Interim Report of the Digital Administration and Fiscal Reform Council has also issued a policy that subsidies will be applied online for twenty twenty-five in the future. In advancing this, I believe that first of all, we will advance the survey on how the digitization of subsidies is progressing.

In advancing this, as I introduced in the previous presentation, we will not manage it in Excel, which we call DXS, but we will manage it by registering what kind of situation it is on the system.

In utilizing this platform, Digital Agency is developing the digital reform Co-Creation Platform, which is a chat tool called Slack, as a means of communication with ministries and agencies. We are working to advance this platform while exchanging information with the participation of PMOs.

Currently, 22 ministries and agencies are promoting the introduction of the Co-Creation Platform. For the introduction of the Platform, we have dispatched digital human resources from Digital Agency and private sector as Promotion of DX staff, and the introduction is being advanced with the support of these people.

In terms of what kind of support we actually provide, there are quite a few hurdles to connecting in the system environments of each ministry and agency, and the security requirements differ a little among ministries and agencies, so we are making considerable progress in coordinating how we can utilize this. First of all, 22 ministries and agencies are advancing the utilization of this co-creation platform and DXS.

Currently, Mr. Promotion of DX is sending such experts to 15 ministries and agencies due to resource issues in Digital Agency, and the ministries and agencies listed in the document are supporting human resources.

This time, in the survey on subsidies, Mr. Ministry of Finance has the subsidy information in the form of the subsidy management system, and we are thinking of conducting the survey based on this. However, we believe that the information on each subsidy is managed by each ministry and agency, so we have obtained consent on whether it can be used, and we are conducting the survey based on it. At present, 22 ministries and agencies have agreed on the possibility of use.

In fact, as I mentioned earlier, we have received information on subsidies from the General Affairs Division of the Budget Bureau in Ministry of Finance, and we have received considerable cooperation in utilizing them. We will continue to make efforts so that these activities can be carried out in all ministries and agencies, so we would like to ask ministries and agencies, which has not made any progress yet, to consider them again. Thank you very much.

In addition, as a result of the survey, there has been no progress in the digitization of subsidies. In order to promote the utilization of jGrants as a common function, as I mentioned earlier, I would like to introduce the situation in jGrants today as reference information.

In jGrants, 14 out of 28 ministries and agencies are currently using subsidies. In addition, in local government, there are 28 prefectures and 16 municipalities, and many of them are large cities such as ordinance-designated cities, and they are using subsidies.

This is a matter that is scheduled to be disclosed next fiscal year. Among them, some people say that the user interface of jGrants is not easy to use. In addition to improving such aspects, we are considering expanding the processing capacity to handle about 10 million cases a year. Up until now, the processing capacity has been less than 1 million cases, but we are thinking of expanding it considerably and creating an environment that can respond to subsidies that are applied for in large numbers.

At the bottom, it says "Screen Example of the Next System" for the Subsidy Office. Actually, the subsidy form and process flow will be created on jGrants, and it will be improved to be more easy-to-understand than before.

In addition, it will be a screen that is easy for business operators who apply for subsidies to search for what subsidies are posted, and we will proceed with the development next fiscal year.

We in Digital Agency also hold online seminars every month to support the introduction of jGrants. For those who are considering digitization of subsidy projects, we first introduce an overview of jGrants, its advantages, and what to refer to when actually using it. This will be held on the 21st of March, so we would like to introduce this information to those who will be implementing subsidies in the future.

In addition, if you are in the stage of actually using the jGrants, and there are some parts that are difficult to set up, we also have an individual consultation meeting, so if there are any parts that the secretariat cannot understand after actually touching the reservations, we would like you to make a reservation and use it.

When it is difficult to set up a system by your own ministry or agency to digitize subsidy applications, I think it will be faster to use jGrants, and from the user's point of view, the fact that subsidy applications can be made on one platform will lead to convenience, so I would like you to consider using it.

That's all from me.

Mr. Hasui: Thank you very much, Mr. .

As Mr. Yoshida stated earlier, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the people of the Ministry of Finance Budget Bureau for their cooperation in this matter. Thank you very much.

In addition, regarding inquiries about this matter, it is possible to make inquiries through the co-creation platform Slack, etc., so we would like to ask many people to consider the introduction of jGrants, etc., while making use of such things, and if you would like to participate in the seminar earlier, etc. Thank you.

If you have any comments or questions about the current explanation, please let us know.

Would that be all right?

Now, regarding the "Status of Consideration of Employment-Related Subsidy DX" in Agenda 3, I would like to ask for an explanation from Mr. Ishigaki, Deputy Director General of Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Thank you.

Deputy Minister Ishigaki: I am Mr. Ishigaki, Deputy Minister in charge of the Employment Security Bureau in Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, . Nice to meet you.

We would like to explain "the status of consideration of DX for employment-related subsidies" along Material 3.

I would like to ask you to turn over one page. Regarding employment-related subsidies, for example, when the economy is bad, there are employment adjustment subsidies, or career advancement subsidies, which are currently provided to cope with the annual income barrier. We provide various subsidies related to employment. As stated above, the number of annual payment decisions is about 400,000, but in the event of the novel coronavirus or major economic fluctuations, for example, the number of employment adjustment subsidies may be 1 million or 2 million per year, and the number of applications varies greatly.

With regard to the current workflow for this, as stated in the materials, after submitting the notification of the plan, confirming it at Hello Work, and implementing the measures, (2) is the application for payment, and after submitting the notification of the plan, an application for payment is made, and Hello Work or the Labor Bureau examines it, determines the payment, and transfers the subsidy. This is the general flow.

With regard to the specific direction of the review below, as you have seen, there are two main areas of work. One is on the left side of the table below, which is the handling of parts related to the submission of notification of plans and applications for payment. The other is the part related to the examination below.

As for the submission and application of the notification of the plan, since April last year, online application has been sequentially launched through a dedicated portal using gBizID. As for the examination, the dedicated portal has been labor-saving with the function I will tell you now. Various information is collated with information held by HelloWork in the system, and if there is a deficiency, inquiries and submission of documents can be made through the system.

However, in Issue for DX, as you can see on the right, online applications are possible, but to be honest, what was originally submitted in paper form is now in PDF form and is included in the application system. The current situation is that the work cannot be done efficiently at all, and as I will say later, there is a Issue that the requirements for subsidies and the procedures themselves need to be reviewed.

The other issue is that in reality, each business office is required by law to have a wage ledger, attendance record, and employment contract, but the creation and management methods may be different as long as the requirements are met. Therefore, we are required to submit them in PDF or paper, and I am ashamed to say that we are required to output them in paper, have them checked by employees, and input them into the system. Therefore, we must make it possible to do all of this digitally. This is our awareness of the problem. Since the end of last year, we have formed a study team within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and have started discussions.

Next, on page 4 of the materials. First of all, regarding the simplification of application items and attached documents, as I mentioned earlier, the current subsidy is based on the workflow of paper applications, and there is no efficiency.

Regarding the second circle, from the viewpoint of preventing illegal receiving, we require quite a few attached documents. Therefore, we carefully examine in advance to prevent illegal receiving, but in reality, some illegal receiving occurs.

My third question is that although we are trying to prevent fraudulent receipt, we need to simplify the application process to reduce the burden on applicants and make it possible for us to make a efficiency in the examination process. Therefore, we would like to make a fundamental review of the subsidy program and the business process itself. Since there are dozens of subsidies, we are currently working on how to review the main subsidies, and if possible, we would like to expand the scope of subsidies to include similar subsidies.

As I will say later, I believe that five perspectives are necessary for the review, and I would like to make significant reductions in accordance with them. In principle, we will abolish the submission of paper and PDF information, and complete the process from application to payment with digital information.

On the other hand, it has been pointed out that the rate of electronic storage of documents is also very poor, and I believe that if all documents can be stored digitally, this will have a significant impact, so I would like to work on this from that perspective.

On page 5, I mentioned five points from the perspective of the review. That is the case. In terms of the review of the system and process, to put it briefly, we would like to review the subsidy system itself. Originally, subsidies were created for various policy purposes and backgrounds, but as a result, it is very complicated and difficult to understand, and I think it is very bad that the procedures are slightly different even though they are the same. The first point is that we would like to review whether it is necessary to submit a plan in the first place and how many applications should be made.

There is a similar story about the second payment requirement. When subsidies are made for economic measures or various other purposes, they are made on a case-by-case basis. This time, I would like to review the system from a zero base and consider that what can be done in common will be done in common.

My third question is about the review of application items. I would like to thoroughly review whether the current application items are really necessary for the examination and whether they are effective. In addition, in particular, we would like to review the items to be submitted at the time of application so that it is not necessary to request duplicate submission in cases where information that is already available in other systems, such as an insured person number, can be obtained in the employment insurance system.

With regard to the attached documents, as I mentioned earlier, we are requesting a considerable amount of them in relation to the prevention of illegal receipt of benefits and eligibility screening, but even if we request such documents, they are not very effective. Therefore, we will of course request the necessary documents, but we will also review them, including focusing on actually checking them on site.

The fifth point is that the application form itself may be different for each grant, so we would like to make it common.

We would like to conduct a review from these five perspectives.

Next, I would like to talk about the attached documents in digitalization. As for the circle at the top of page 7, the attached documents are currently submitted in paper or PDF format, but it is inefficient to publish them once. Therefore, in conjunction with the review of the subsidy program, we would like to promote the unification of the digitalization and format of the attached documents and efficiency them.

As for the second circle, companies are engaged in personnel and labor management. Some major companies manufacture their own systems, while medium-sized and small companies use various commercially available software and use the systems of dozens of companies. Small companies use their own Excel sheets and paper, so they are all in one place.

As for the third grant process, when applying digitally for these types of grants, we would like to make it possible to process them in common as much as possible by using API cooperation with our grant portal or showing a standard form to apply for them.

At this time, as I stated at the bottom in parentheses, Mr. jGrants, who you mentioned earlier, is gradually becoming larger in size and more user-friendly, so I believe there is a possibility that we will work in unison while looking at the direction of the review of the entire Government, and that we will work together in the future, so I would like to work while paying attention to that.

We would like to advance such initiatives sequentially, starting with those that are possible, and we would like to request necessary measures in the budget request for next fiscal year.

It was a vague explanation, but since we have been working on the spread of it recently, we still do not have enough experience, so I would like to work on it while learning from everyone. Thank you very much.

That's all.

Mr. Hasui: Thank you very much, Mr. .

We would really appreciate if you could proceed with the review from the perspective of BPR, one time only, and other digital principles. Digital Agency would like to cooperate as much as possible. Thank you very much.

Please let us know if you have any comments or questions on Mr. Ishigaki's explanation.

I believe that such cooperation with Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is extremely important, and if other ministries and agencies have such discussions, I would appreciate it if you could tell us in a positive manner.

Next, I would like to move on to agenda 4, "IT Introduction Subsidies." Mr. Matsuura, Director of the Management Support Department of the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, nice to meet you.

Mr. Matsuura: Thank you for your introduction, I am Mr. , Executive Director of the Management Support Department of the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency. I will explain based on the materials I am sharing now.

Regarding IT introduction subsidies, we have been launching subsidies since 2017, and since the improvement of labor productivity of SMEs and micro-enterprises will lead to wage increases, we will actively support the introduction of IT tools and software for business efficiency, DX, etc.

As for the target tools, as written there, not only various software, but also, for example, IT introduction is, of course, a service for small businesses and SMEs that lack literacy, and we subsidize the cost of using such services to promote the introduction.

In addition, there is an "invoice frame" in blue in the middle of this document. The invoice frame itself has been introduced since two years ago, and invoice system has been introduced there since October last year as an "invoice response type." Ahead of that, we are working to reduce back-office labor in the introduction of IT tools for accounting treatment related to invoice system.

I would like to omit the next page and introduce two or three examples of how small and medium-sized enterprises are used.

My first question is about the company that sells office automation and other equipment in the retail industry in Fukuoka Prefecture. This company deals in mobile phone-related equipment, and as you can see in the picture, it deals in mobile phones. As you know, the number of items related to mobile phones is increasing year by year, and in fact, this company is manually managing inventory. Of course, there is a limit to this. Under such circumstances, with the introduction of IT, inventory management in real time by reading IC tags and RF tags was achieved. As a result, it is expected to reduce inventory time by 50%. In light of the recent severe labor shortage, labor saving will contribute to the improvements in productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises.

On the next page, Mr. K's Metal, a company in Toyama Prefecture, is engaged in precision processing of metal products. The problem this company has is related to accounting. In accounting, a trial balance is made monthly or quarterly, but communication to make this is done on a paper basis with an accounting firm, so it takes two months to make a trial balance. With this, monthly accounting cannot be done.

Therefore, by introducing the sharing of data such as electronic ledgers in real time with accounting firms through the cloud using IT tools such as those prepared by TKC this time, the preparation of the trial balance, which had been made on a two month basis, will be half, that is, one month. As a result, it will be possible to manage the monthly trial balance, which is very significant in terms of the soundness of accounting.

My third question is about a company in Kanazawa city, which is engaged in building maintenance. The problem for this company is work shifts. Of course, work shifts for building maintenance are difficult, but they were made at the last minute, about the day before or the day before. In that case, employees cannot see much into the future, and in short, it will affect their own schedule management. Under such circumstances, the IT tool introduced this time is to create a Gantt chart while utilizing AI. By creating a chart in advance, it was possible to shift only the day before or the day before, but by introducing this, it became possible to make a work shift up to one month ahead. As a result, stress related to schedules has been significantly reduced for employees, and small and medium-sized enterprises and small business operators such as building maintenance are very hard to recruit people. In order to attract people, we will secure human resources by preparing good working environments. I think efficiency and labor saving are very difficult, but we will do our best. We will continue to support them.

That's all for my explanation.

Mr. Hasui: Thank you very much, Mr. .

I think it is a tool to advance DX for SMEs. As I have been saying since the first one, DX for SMEs and small businesses is extremely important. In that sense, it is the core of business DX, so I think it is good to create a mechanism that can be widely connected from transactions to payments. I hope that people in each ministry will understand these tools and use them by introducing them to industries in their jurisdiction. Thank you very much.

Please let us know if you have any comments or questions about the current explanation.

Would that be all right?

That's all for the agenda.

Today, first of all, Mr. Ishigaki, Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, introduced the status of consideration of DX for employment-related subsidies, and Mr. Matsuura, Director of the Management Support Department of the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, introduced IT introduction subsidies. In addition, at the previous meeting, Mr. Uematsu, Deputy Director-General of the National Tax Agency, introduced the efforts of the Regional Taxation Bureau and the Tax Office in area in cooperation with related organizations and other ministries and agencies toward the digitalization of business operators.

In addition, I would like to thank you once again for your cooperation with the ministries and agencies responsible for each project and for the wide range of industry groups and other organizations that are aware of this. In order to advance cooperation on these efforts from where they can be realized on a field basis, we would like to ask you to introduce and disseminate the purpose of the efforts of the Liaison Conference by utilizing meetings at local branch offices of each ministry and agency. We are also considering going to the field as much as possible to make it known.

We hope to continue to deepen cooperation and collaboration among related ministries and agencies by sharing information that we would like to disseminate to business operators in area or projects that we would like to work on in cooperation with related ministries and agencies.

We would like to make an administrative inquiry at a later date, so we would appreciate your cooperation.

That concludes today's agenda. Thank you very much, everyone.

The secretariat will contact you later about the schedule of the next meeting.

Thank you very much for taking the time to attend today. This concludes the Inter-Ministerial Meeting. Thank you very much.