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Unification and Standardization of Core Business Systems of Local Governments

Announcements

Contents

Overview

Background

In the past, local governments have developed, procured, and managed various information systems with their own originality and ingenuity in order to provide various services for residents.
However, the following issues have been pointed out due to the fact that information systems have been customized for each local government, even for tasks that are common to each local government as defined by laws and ordinances, etc.

  • Personnel and financial burdens are heavy because individual responses are required for maintenance, management, and renovation when the system is revised.
  • Adjustment of differences in information systems is burdensome, and cloud utilization does not proceed smoothly
  • As a result, it is difficult to quickly disseminate the most appropriate measures to improve services for residents nationwide.

Japan's working-age population (15 to 64 years old) is expected to decline to 52.75 million in 2050 due to the declining birthrate and aging population. In order to maintain and strengthen public services with digital power even in a society with a declining population, it is essential to solve the above problems. Therefore, it is important for the national and local governments to cooperate to make the most efficient and effective use of digital technology, rather than for the approximately 1,800 local governments to individually develop and own systems.
Based on a report by the 32nd Local Government Systems Research Council, an advisory body to the Prime Minister, the "Act on Standardization of Information Systems for Local Governments" (Standardization Act) (e-Gov laws and ordinances Search) (hereinafter referred to as the "Standardization Act") was enacted and enforced in 2021 (2021).

This law specifies the affairs subject to standardization (affairs subject to standardization, 20 affairs at present) from the viewpoint of the commonality of the content of the processing of affairs, the improvement of convenience for residents, and the efficiency improvement of local administration operations in local public entities, and requires that information systems used by local public entities for processing these affairs conform to the standards for standardization (hereinafter referred to as "standardization standards") specified by the relevant ministries and agencies (hereinafter referred to as "standard compliance system").
By doing so, we aim to reduce the human and financial burden on local governments in the future, enable local government employees to focus on providing direct services to residents and planning work based on the actual situation of the digitalisation, and build a regional infrastructure to spread online applications nationwide.
In addition, based on the experience of responding to the novel coronavirus infection and the urgent need to promote digitalisation throughout society, local governments are to aim for a smooth and safe transition to standard compliance system by the time of twenty twenty-five (twenty twenty-five), as a general rule.

Promotion Framework and Roles of Digital Agency

Based on the Standardization Law, the national government has specified 20 standardization target affairs and established the "Basic Policies for the Standardization of Information Systems for Basic Policy for Standardization of Information Systems" (hereinafter referred to as the "Basic Policies") by cabinet decision.

Digital Agency leads the formulation of basic policies and works to promote measures efficiently and effectively as the control tower of each ministry and agency in charge of the system. It also provides the of standardization work policies (regarding points to be examined, work flow, how to establish standards, and horizontal coordination policies) to the ministries and agencies in charge of the Nagoya system, and supports the further improvement of standard specifications.

The ministries and agencies with jurisdiction over the affairs subject to standardization are to establish standard specifications that include the contents specified in the standardization standards for the affairs under their jurisdiction based on the work policies indicated by Digital Agency. In addition, Digital Agency and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications are to establish standards for common matters such as data linkage and cybersecurity. (For Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications's efforts, see Main Efforts as toward Standardization and Standardization of Municipal Information Systems (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) (PDF format) .) Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
In Digital Agency, in particular, the following common items are in place.

  1. Standards for data and linkage requirements
  2. Standards for non-functional requirements common to each standard compliance system
  3. Standards for common functions (application management function, internal unified addressing function, etc.)

According to the Standardization Act, local governments are required to make efforts to use nationwide cloud environments ( Government Cloud ) developed by the national government. Government Cloud is procured by Digital Agency and provides its services to local governments. By using Government Cloud, local governments can easily enjoy the benefits of cost reduction through joint use, rapid construction and flexible expansion of information systems, security measures, and operation monitoring.

To support the transition to standard compliance system, Digital Agency has established a "Standardization Liaison" and a "Business Council for the Promotion of Unification and Standardization of Core Business Systems". In addition, in cooperation with Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and prefectural governments, local governments are being supported in the transition to standardization. For details, please visit the Transition Support .
The MLIT works in cooperation with standard compliance system, which is under the jurisdiction of the MLIT, to monitor the progress of local governments and to provide financial support * for the expenses required for the transition to Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

* Environmental improvement for standardization and sharing of Municipal Information Systems (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) (PDF format)

Reference

Basic Policy for Standardization of Information Systems
Support from the ministry in charge of the system

Vision of Local Government System Standardization

Efforts to unify and standardize the core business systems of local governments aim to enable local governments to reduce the human and financial burden and focus on improved services for residents in line with local circumstances, as well as enable the rapid development of new services.

The objectives of the basic policy are as follows.

  1. The development of digitalisation infrastructure in local governments through the formulation or revision of standardization standards based on business process reform (BPR) based on the three digital principles and business flow premised on digital processing by ministries and agencies with jurisdiction over the system.
    • Three digital principles
      • Digital first (individual procedures and services must be completed in a digital format)
      • Once only (information submitted once does not need to be submitted twice)
      • Connected one stop (one stop implementation of multiple procedures and services, including private services)
  2. To avoid vendor lock-in and ensure a competitive environment for multiple business operators at the application level by standardizing specifications such as functional requirements and conforming to standardization standards for data requirements and collaboration requirements.
  3. When it is necessary to renovate a standard compliance system for the purpose of institutional revision or emergency response to sudden administrative demands, the national government should formulate or change the standardization criteria to reduce the burden on local governments to deal with each case, minimize the scope of such renovation, and enable prompt renovation.
  4. The use of the Government Cloud will enable local governments to reduce the burden of maintaining and managing hardware such as servers and software such as OS, middleware, and applications.
  5. Provide a highly economical government cloud service while ensuring a high level of security.
  6. To enable each business operator, including start-ups and local business operators, to have the opportunity to deploy a system they have developed nationwide without developing their own cloud infrastructure.
  7. After the completion of the transition to standard compliance system, the Government shall aim to reduce the operating costs of information systems related to standardized administrative work by at least 30% from the FY2018 level. The Government shall take measures to optimize the operating costs of all administrative work including BPR based on the Three Digital Principles, thereby developing environments for the realization of the target.
  8. When the national government or local governments newly take measures utilizing the data of the core operation systems of local governments, they will make it possible to smoothly import data from the core operation systems, which has been costly in terms of both time and cost, by building an application for standardized data import on the government cloud in advance, and contribute to the prompt launch of services for citizens.

In order to achieve these goals, standard compliance system will improve its infrastructure so that all local governments using core business systems can smoothly and safely move to Digital Agency built on Government Cloud by FY 2025 (twenty twenty-five).
In doing so, toward fiscal 2025 (twenty twenty-five), we will carefully assess the impact of system revisions, etc. on migration work through local governments and business operators, and actively support the smooth and safe migration of core business systems to standard compliance system.

Current status of standard compliance system

Work subject to standardization and formulation of standards

The following 20 types of work are currently designated by government ordinance as work subject to standardization.

  • Child benefit
  • Support for children and child care
  • Basic resident register
  • Supplementary Family Register
  • Seal impression registration
  • Management of electoral register
  • Fixed asset tax
  • Private Residential Tax
  • Corporation inhabitants tax
  • Light motor vehicle tax
  • Family register
  • School attendance
  • Health care
  • Child maintenance allowance
  • Livelihood protection
  • Welfare of the disabled
  • Nursing care insurance
  • National Health Insurance
  • Medical care for the elderly
  • National pension

By the end of fiscal 2022 (fiscal 2022), the ministries and agencies in charge of each system had formulated standard specifications for the above-mentioned standardized administrative work.

Standard compliance system standard specifications

Progress

According to the PMO tool, which manages the progress status of each local government, the progress rate of local governments as of September 2024 (the ratio of the number of municipalities that have started such work) is as follows, and the number of local governments as the denominator is 1,741.

Current Status Graph for standard compliance system

  1. Comparative analysis with standard specifications
    • Progress rate: 97.6%
    • Started: 1,700 municipalities
  2. Budget Adjustments:
    • Progress rate: 86.1%
    • Started: 1,499 municipalities
  3. Vendor Selection:
    • Progress rate: 85.0%
    • Started: 1,479 municipalities
  4. Establish migration schedule:
    • Progress rate: 65.8%
    • Started: 1,145 municipalities

Measures in the Case of High Difficulty of Transition to standard compliance system

Systems that are expected to be extremely difficult to migrate due to the following reasons are designated as "difficult to migrate systems."

  • The current system before the migration to standard compliance system is composed of mainframes, and it takes a relatively long time to complete the migration to standard compliance system, including data migration, from understanding the entire system, compared to other systems.
  • The operator that constructed and operated the current system withdrew from the development of the standard compliance system, and although other operators were publicly advertised, no alternative operator was found.

For systems that are difficult to migrate, Digital Agency and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will fully understand the status of the system in question, and the necessary deadline for completing the migration will be set by the ordinance of the competent ministry that establishes the standardization standards.

Status of Difficult-to-Migrate Systems and Responses

In October 2023, we conducted a survey of all organizations to identify systems that were difficult to migrate, and from November 2023 to February 2024, we conducted interviews with organizations that had reported difficulties in migrating in Digital Agency and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and then conducted a detailed examination of the results.

As a result, 171 organizations (10%) and 702 systems (2%) out of 1,788 organizations and 34,592 systems, including prefectural governments, are expected to fall under the category of systems that are difficult to migrate, and 50 organizations and 487 systems (1%) do not fall under the category of systems that are difficult to migrate, so we will suspend the judgment and continue to investigate the situation.
We will continue to conduct surveys, and as soon as there is a change in the planned transition status, we will ask each organization to submit a survey sheet, and if necessary, we will hold hearings in Digital Agency and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

In addition, as a follow-up to local governments that have systems that are difficult to transfer but have not yet selected the next operator due to the withdrawal of the current system provider, we will provide information on the operator so that it can be used as a reference when local governments select the next operator.

  • In Digital Agency, through the Operator Council, confirm whether or not the operator can deal with local governments that have systems that are difficult to transfer, and if it is possible, collect information on the conditions for consideration of acceptance through a questionnaire survey.
  • Provision of collected information to local governments as reference information when selecting the next business operator

Efforts toward the development of common matters

Moving to the Government Cloud

In order to maintain high-quality public services and flexibly respond to the diversifying needs of the people in a rapidly aging society with a declining birthrate, it is important to promote the standardization of digital infrastructure between the national and local governments. In addition to the standardization of core operations of local governments, we are working on the transition of local government information systems to the Government Cloud.

By moving to the Government Cloud, you will be able to enjoy the following benefits:

  • Upgrading the security level of the entire local government information system
  • Enable large-scale disaster response (disaster recovery)
  • To improve the efficiency of clerical work generated by conventional systems
  • Rapid provision of administrative services in the event of an emergency
  • Flexible system development

In addition, there are local governments that have already optimized by sharing systems, etc., and even if measures are taken to reduce running costs, it is expected that costs will increase due to the transition to the Government Cloud. For such local governments, even if they do not move to the Government Cloud immediately, we plan to support the consideration of the transition to the Government Cloud again when adding equipment to the current infrastructure or updating systems in the future, and promote the utilization of the Government Cloud so that they can enjoy the benefits of the utilization.

Validation for Migration to Government Cloud

Initiatives for the Government Cloud Pilot Project

Since fiscal 2021, we have been using the Government Cloud developed by Digital Agency to verify issues related to the transition to the Government Cloud so that people in municipalities can use standard compliance system with peace of mind.
Verification, which was conducted as a preceding project, is being continued as part of the 2024 Government Cloud Early Transition Group Verification Project.
For initiatives, please see Initiatives for Verification Projects for Vendors in Government Cloud Advance Project (core business systems of municipalities, etc.) .

Government Cloud Early Transition Group Verification Project

In order to verify issues related to the transition to the Government Cloud developed by Digital Agency and the operation of systems on the Government Cloud, we conducted a public application for an early transition group verification project.
For initiatives, please see Initiatives for Verification Projects for Vendors in Government Cloud Early Transition Group Verification Project .

Government Cloud

In order to further promote the use of Government Cloud by local governments, we invited vendors to actively participate in initiatives such as the efficient operation of shared use methods in Government Cloud, the accumulation of know-how on inter-system collaboration, and the verification of inter-system collaboration among multi-vendors.
For initiatives, please see Initiatives for Verification Projects for Vendors in Government Cloud .

Materials for Utilizing Government Cloud

Development of common functions and responses to individual issues

Standards for data and linkage requirements

With the aim of unifying and standardizing information systems for local governments, the ministries and agencies in charge of the systems have formulated standard specifications that specify functional requirements for each of the 20 services subject to standardization. Digital Agency has also formulated the " Common Functional Standard Specifications " and the " Data Requirements and Collaboration Requirements Standard Specifications ," which reflect the results of the Common Functional Technical Requirements Study Meeting held in Digital Agency in the second half of fiscal 2022.
In addition, the approach to data requirements and cooperation requirements in standardization is summarized in on the correspondence of data requirements and cooperation requirements in the standardization of municipal information systems (PDF / 880 kb).

Based on these standard specifications, etc., specific work has been carried out since fiscal 2023 for the development of standard compliance system by business operators and the introduction by local governments. While proceeding with the work, there are opinions that call for further elaboration of the standard specifications for data requirements and cooperation requirements, etc., but there are also opinions that call for careful consideration because there is a possibility of rework at this stage when development has progressed.

Based on these opinions, Digital Agency newly established the Common Function and Other Issues Study Group in order to grasp the development status of common functions and other issues related to migration, and to consider measures to realize smooth and safe migration.
Based on the premise that standard compliance system is moving from the development stage to the introduction and operation stage, the Study Group decided to create a reference (recommended guidelines), provide a list of main items to be checked, and share precedent cases, etc., in order to facilitate coordination between local governments and business operators in terms of operation.
In the future, we will work to ensure smooth coordination among related parties by promptly disclosing those that have been sorted out through the Common Function Issues Review Meeting.

The specifications of the standard specifications for data requirements and linkage requirements are shown on the following pages.
Standard specifications for data requirements and linkage requirements

Character Standardization in Local Government Information Systems

In the past, local government information systems created "Gaiji" for each local government, but there were various problems as follows.

  • Expensive to create and manage
  • Garbled characters occur during data linkage between systems.
  • Difficulty in transferring to another operator's system when updating the system

In order to solve these problems, Digital Agency is promoting data standardization through efforts to unify and standardize the mission-critical operation systems of local governments. As part of this, the "Standard Administrative Work Character (MJ +)," which defines the characters commonly used in standard compliance system, was established.
In addition, we developed a tool to support the work of identifying "Standard Characters for Administrative Work (MJ +)" from "Gaiji" that had been created by each local government, and the tool has actually been used by local governments since April 2024.

In September 2024, IGES provided a font file (approximately 40000 characters) to local governments across Japan. This font file was created by removing characters that are not expected to be used in mission-critical systems from the Standard Administrative Characters, as the Standard Administrative Characters is a character set of approximately 70000 characters, which exceeds the maximum number of font files that can be implemented in a general system (approximately 65000 characters) and requires the combination of multiple font files, making implementation difficult.

Through the active use of this tool and the provision of font files, Digital Agency will actively support local governments so that work toward systematic character standardization can proceed.

Development of Guidelines for Character Inclusion

With the aim of standardizing core business systems, we have established guidelines for judging whether or not they can be included in the Standard Administrative Characters as a reference when local governments identify them as the Standard Administrative Characters.
For details, please refer to the Character Inclusion Guidelines (PDF / 3,006 kb) (posted on June 5, 2024).

Standards for non-functional requirements common to each standard compliance system

With regard to the standards for non-functional requirements, the "Guide for the Use of Non-functional Requirement Grades (Local Public Body Version) (PDF format)" ( ) has been revised and added based on the "selection levels" of the following items that are considered to be necessary, taking into account the latest situations, etc.

  • "Among the requirement grades indicated as" "Group ②" "in the classification of operations and systems, items whose handling in cloud procurement is" "○: Items that can be subject to cloud" ""
  • Specifically, requirements other than the following functional requirements are specified for the mission-critical operation system.
    • Availability
    • Performance and expandability
    • Operability and maintainability
    • Transferability
    • Security
    • System environment and ecology

In addition, in the Government Cloud Advance Project, we are verifying whether the core business system to be built on the Government Cloud can satisfy the standards of the current non-functional requirements. In the verification process so far, we are reviewing the requirements based on the following opinions from the organizations and businesses participating in the Advance Project.

  • Questions raised in the interpretation of requirements when establishing the verification plan for each requirement
  • Points where selection levels and conditions should be changed based on the characteristics of the government cloud

At the same time, we reviewed the selection level, etc., taking into account the status of consideration of the revision of the guidelines for information security policies of local governments, and also took into account questions and opinions received from local governments, etc. in the opinion inquiry.

Standards for common functions (application management function, internal unified addressing function, etc.)

The common functions in standard compliance system can be broadly classified into the following three functional groups.

  1. System common functional group: A functional group for realizing the functional requirements common to more than one standard compliance system among the functions required for a standard compliance system.
  2. Integrated Operation and Management Functional Group: This refers to a functional group for realizing non-functional requirements such as operation monitoring, job management, backup and recovery, data encryption, anti-virus, automatic deployment, and cost optimizing support among functions required for standard compliance system.
  3. Infrastructure Function Group: Refers to a group of functions to realize infrastructure requirements such as compute, storage, and database among the functions necessary for standard compliance system.

"Among" "1. System Common Function Group," "the functions that are considered to be able to be provided in loose coupling with the core business system are subject to the standard specifications for the common functions because they may be provided by a business operator different from the business operator that provides the core business system. Other functions are not subject to the standard specifications because it is considered to be more efficient to provide them by the same business operator as the business operator that provides the core business system in consideration of the connection with the business and the feasibility of standardization."
In addition, "2. Integrated Operation and Management Function Group" and "3. Infrastructure Function Group" are excluded from the scope of this standard because of the possible use of government cloud.

The standard specifications for common functions are shown on the following pages.

Transition Support

Digital Agency has established the Standardization Liaison Council * 1 and the Business Council for the Promotion of Unification and Standardization of Mission-critical Business Systems * 2, and is working with Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and prefectural governments to support the transition to standardization by local governments.

* 1 Standardization liaison
A support system established by dispatched officials from each prefecture to provide technical support by confirming the progress and identifying the issues of each local government in the unification and standardization
* 2 Business Council for the Promotion of Unification and Standardization of Core Business Systems
Council established to grasp the development status of standard compliance system and issues related to the transition, and to discuss measures to realize the transition to a smooth and safe standard compliance system

Reference

Meetings, etc.

Study Meeting on the Development of Standard Specifications for Standardized Clerical Work

For 20 major operations of local governments, such as resident records, local taxes, nursing care, and welfare, review meetings are held by the ministries and agencies with jurisdiction over the system, together with local governments, related organizations, and businesses, in order to prepare standard specifications.

Management policy for standard specifications, etc.