Japan PM wants basic policy on new digital agency by year-end - Media

Source: Reuters Published: 2020/9/23 18:48:40

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Wednesday he wanted to compile a basic policy on a new digital agency by the end of 2020 and submit the bills to 2021's ordinary session of parliament, local media reported.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga speaks at the first meeting of all ministers to promote Japan's digital transformation at the Prime Minister's Office on Wednesday. Photo: VCG

Creating an agency to speed up the digitalization of Japan's outdated government administration has been a key pledge of Suga, who was elected premier on September 16. While the government has made "digital transformation" its main policy plank in 2020, the switch has proved difficult due partly to a vertically structured bureaucracy that hampers efforts to use common platforms for administrative work.

"We need to make an organization with personnel of high ability from public and private sectors, which would lead digitalization in the overall society," the Nikkei quoted Suga as saying.

"I want to accelerate discussions to do so, compile basic policy by the end of this year and submit necessary bills to the next ordinary session of parliament."

Suga has pledged to make sweeping changes to overcome the digital woes.

Takuya Hirai, digital transformation minister, said on Friday that Suga had told him to accelerate preparations for setting up new digital agency. And he and government officials met over the weekend to discuss the digital agency.
Newspaper headline: Suga eyes policy for new digital agency


Posted in: ASIA-PACIFIC

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